Profile of Bob Kaufman on Famous Like Me

Bob Kaufman (April 18, 1925 – January 12, 1986), born Robert Garnell Kaufman in New Orleans, Louisiana, was an American Beat poet and surrealist inspired by jazz music.

Life

Kaufman was one of thirteen children, the son of a German-Jewish father and a Roman-Catholic Black mother from Martinique; his grandmother practiced voodoo. At age thirteen, Kaufman joined the Merchant Marine, which he left in the early 1940s to briefly study literature at New York's New School, where he met William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg. He moved to San Francisco in 1958 and remained there for most of the rest of his life. Like many beat writers, Kaufman became a Buddhist. In France, where his poetry had a large following, he was known as the "American Rimbaud."

Poetry

His poetry made use of jazz syncopation and meter. The 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 about his work, "My head is a boney guitar, strung with tongues, plucked by fingers & nails."

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 1975. He broke his silence by reciting his poem "All Those Ships that Never Sailed," the first 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 transitory

And let them sail

Forever

Bibliography

Books

• Solitudes Crowded with Loneliness (New Directions, 1965)
• Golden Sardine (City Lights, 1967)
• Watch My Tracks (Knopf, 1971)
• Ancient Rain: Poems 1956-1978 (New Directions, 1981)
• Cranial Guitar: Selected Poems by Bob Kaufman (Coffee House Press, 1996)

Further Reading

• 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).
• Cherkovski, Neeli. Whitman's Wild Children. Venice, CA: Lapis (1988).
• Christian, Barbara. "Whatever Happened to Bob Kaufman?" Black World 21 (September 1972).
• 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, AD. "Bob Kaufman." The American Poetry Review (May/June 2000).

External Links

• Bob Kaufman: The Jazz Poet of the Streets
• Bob Kaufman at the Beat Museum
• Modern American Poetry, Bob Kaufman
• Essay on Kaufman’s O-Jazz-O

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