Bob Kaufman

Bob Kaufman (1925-1986). Courtesy NNDB.

Robert Garnell Kaufman (April 18, 1925 - January 12, 1986) was an African-American poet, a Beat and a surrealist inspired by jazz music. In France, where his poetry had a large following, he was called the "American Rimbaud."

Life

Kaufman was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, in a family of 13 children. He claimed that he was the son of a German-Jewish father and a Roman Catholic Black mother from Martinique, and that his grandmother practiced voodoo.

At age 13, Kaufman joined the United States Merchant Marine. He left in the early 1940s to briefly study literature at The New School in New York City, where he met William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg.

In 1944 Kaufman married Ida Berrocal. They had a daughter, Antoinette Victoria Marie (Nagle), born in New York City in 1945 (died 2008). Kaufman moved to San Francisco's North Beach in 1958 and remained there for most of the rest of his life. He married Eileen Singe in 1958; they had a child, Parker, named for Charlie Parker.

Like many beat writers, Kaufman became a Buddhist. In 1959, along with poets Allen Ginsberg, John Kelly, A.D. Winans, and William Margolis, he was one of the founders of Beatitude magazine.

In 1959, Kaufman had a small role in a movie called The Flower Thief, which was shot in North Beach by Ron Rice. He appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson 4 times in 1970-1971.

In an interview, Ken Kesey describes seeing Kaufman on the streets of San Francisco's North Beach during a visit to that city with his family in the 1950s:

I can remember driving down to North Beach with my folks and seeing Bob Kaufman out there on the street. I didn’t know he was Bob Kaufman at the time. He had little pieces of Band-Aid tape all over his face, about two inches wide, and little smaller ones like two inches long -- and all of them made into crosses. He came up to the cars, and he was babbling poetry into these cars. He came up to the car I was riding in, and my folks, and started jabbering this stuff into the car. I knew that this was exceptional use of the human voice and the human mind.

After learning of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Kaufman took a Buddhist vow of silence that lasted until the end of the Vietnam War in 1973. He broke his 10-year vow of silence in 1973 by reciting his poem "All Those Ships that Never Sailed," the opening lines of which are

All those ships that never sailed

The ones with their seacocks open

That were scuttled in their stalls...

Today I bring them back

Huge and intransitory

And let them sail

Forever

Writing

Kaufman, a poet in the oral tradition, usually didn't write down his poems, and much of his published work survives by way of his wife Eileen, who wrote his poems down as he conceived them.

Kaufman's poetry made use of jazz syncopation and rhythms. Critic Raymond Foye wrote about him: "Adapting the harmonic complexities and spontaneous invention of bebop to poetic euphony and meter, he became the quintessential jazz poet."

Poet Jack Micheline said about Kaufman: "I found his work to be essentially improvisational, and was at its best when accompanied by a jazz musician. His technique resembled that of the surreal school of poets, ranging from a powerful, visionary lyricism of satirical, near dadaistic leanings, to the more prophetic tone that can be found in his political poems."

Kaufman said of his own work: "My head is a bony guitar, strung with tongues, plucked by fingers & nails."

Recognition

In 1961, Kaufman was nominated for England's Guinness Poetry Award, but lost to T.S. Eliot.

Publications

• Abomunist Manifesto (broadside). San Francisco, CA: City Lights, 1959.
• Second April (broadside). San Francisco, CA: City Lights, 1959.
• Does the Secret Mind Whisper? (broadside). San Francisco, CA: City Lights, 1960.
• Solitudes Crowded with Loneliness. New York: New Directions, 1965.
• Golden Sardine (edited by Mary Beach). San Franciso, CA: City Lights, 1967.
• Ancient Rain: Poems, 1956-1978. New York: New Directions, 1981.
• Cranial Guitar: Selected poems by Bob Kaufman (edited by Gerald Nicosia). Minneapolis, MN: Coffee House Press, 1996.

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.

See also

Bob Kaufman reading a poem A' (Rare footage)

Bob Kaufman reading a poem B' (Rare footage)

Bob kaufman reading

• The Beat poets
• List of U.S. poets

References

• Abbott, Steve. "Hidden Master of the Beats." Poetry Flash (February 1986).
• Anderson, TJ III. "Body and Soul: Bob Kaufman's Golden Sardine." African American Review (Summer 2000).
• Charters, Ann (ed.). The Portable Beat Reader. Penguin Books. New York. 1992. ISBN 0-670-83885-3 (hc); ISBN 0-14-015102-8 (pbk)
• Cherkovski, Neeli. Elegy for Bob Kaufman. San Francisco, CA: Sun Dog Press (1996).
• Cherkovski, Neeli. Whitman's Wild Children. Venice, CA: Lapis (1988).
• Christian, Barbara. "Whatever Happened to Bob Kaufman?" Black World 21 (September 1972).
• Clay, Mel. Jazz Jail and God: Impressionistic Biography of Bob Kaufman. San Francisco, CA: Androgyne Books (1987).
• Damon, Maha. "'Unmeaning Jargon'/Uncanonized Beatitude: Bob Kaufman, Poet." South Atlantic Quarterly 87.4 (Fall 1988).
• Foye, Raymond. "Bob Kaufman, A Proven Glory." The Poetry Project Newsletter (March 1986).
• Kaufman, Eileen. "Laughter Sounds Orange at Night." In The Beat Vision: A Primary Sourcebook. Eds. Arthur Knight and Kit Knight. New York: Paragon (1967).
• Lindberg, Kathryne V. "Bob Kaufman, Sir Real." Talisman 11 (Fall 1993).
• Seymore, Tony. "Crimes of a Warrior Poet." Players Magazine (December 1983).
• Winans, A.D. "Bob Kaufman." The American Poetry Review (May/June 2000).

External links

Poems

• Bob Kaufman profile & 4 poems at The Beat Page.
• Bob Kaufman 1925-1986 at the Poetry Foundation.
• Bob Kaufman: Online poems

About

• Bob Kaufman profile at the Academy of American Poets
• Bob Kaufman at the Beat Museum
• Bob Kaufman at NNDB.
• Bob Kaufman (1925-1986) at Modern American Poetry.
• Bob Kaufman at the Internet Movie Database