Orson Scott Card and Rod McKuen and poetry

Most well-known as the mastermind behind science fiction hit Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card is also a columnist and conservative activist (yikes!) who has some ideas on how to crack the puzzling codes of writing and reading poetry. In this article for the Mormon Times, Card returns to his college days to reflect upon the training he received from Mormon poet Clinton F. Larson :

When I got to BYU, I signed up for a poetry class from Professor Larson. It was in the late '60s, when Rod McKuen's poetry was all the rage. (It's hard to imagine today, and it was rather a surprise then, that books of poetry, by someone known only as a poet, could be bestsellers.)

There was never a poet more accessible than Rod McKuen. In fact, having read several of his poems, you immediately recognized all the others. But I was 17, an age of intense unnameable feelings, and McKuen's poems of loneliness, love and melancholy suited both the era and my age.

Professor Larson knew immediately, when he saw my poetry, that I was VUI — versifying under the influence of Rod McKuen. Perhaps because I was my mother's son, he took the trouble to advise me: "All you're doing right now is gushing. Free verse doesn't mean anything unless the poet understands form. So I don't want to see another piece of free verse from you until you've written a hundred sonnets."

And, just because, here's a video of Rod McKuen exerting his influence: