Life

Kaufman was one of long dozen toddlers, the boy of the German-Jewish father & a Roman-Catholic Black mother from either Martinique; his grandmother expert voodoo. At age 13, Kaufman joined a Merchant Marine, which he left in the early 1940s to briefly survey 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 virtually all of the rest of his life. Rather several beat writers, Kaufman became the Buddhist. Inside France, where his poetry experienced a big as a consequence, he was referred to as the "American Rimbaud."

Poetry

His poetry mass produced utilize of jazz syncopation & meter. A critic Raymond Foye wrote all 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 all about his function, "My head is a boney guitar, strung with tongues, plucked by fingers & nails."

Fallowing 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 verse form "All Those Ships that Never Sailed," a foremost lines of which are Bibliography

Books

Solitudes Crowded sustaining Loneliness (Fresh Directions, 1965) Golden Sardine (City Lights, 1967) View Our Tracks (Knopf, 1971) Ancient Rain: Verse form 1956-1978 (Fresh Directions, 1981) Cranial Guitar: Selected Verse form by Bob Kaufman (Coffee Home Click, 1996)

More Reading

Abbott, Steve. "Hidden Master of the Beats." Poetry Flash player (February 1986). Anderson, TJ Trinity. "Body and Soul: Bob Kaufman's Golden Sardine." African Western View (Summer 2000). Cherkovski, Neeli. ''Whitman's Uncivilized Tykes. Venice, CA: Lapis (1988). Christian, Barbara. "Whatever Happened to Bob Kaufman?" Black Globe Xxi'' (September 1972). Damon, Maha. "'Unmeaning Jargon'/Uncanonized Beatitude: Bob Kaufman, Poet." In the south Atlantic Quarterly 87.Little joe (Fall 1988). Foye, Raymond. "Bob Kaufman, A Proven Glory." A Poetry Design Newssheet (March 1986). Kaufman, Eileen. "Laughter Sounds Orange at Night." In The Beat Vision: The Primary Sourcebook. Eds. Arthur Knight & Kit Knight. Up to date York: Paragon (1967). Lindberg, Kathryne V. "Bob Kaufman, Sir Real." Amulet Xi (Fall 1993). Seymore, Tony. "Crimes of a Warrior Poet." Players Magazine (December 1983). Winans, AD. "Bob Kaufman." A Western Poetry View (May/June 2000).