Cranial Guitar [Paperback]

Bob Kaufman (Author), David Henderson (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1, 1995

incl the entire long out-of-print GOLDEN SARDINE

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Straight from some astral plane comes the ghost of this great Beat poet, packing a "sawed-off high chair" and bemoaning the "black carrot of denial, burned in the toasters of memory." This is not so much a collection as it is a steam-pipe explosion. Great bellowing clouds of imagery-dangerous, larger than life and amorphous as sweat-carry the old but juicy news of being on the bum in California and New York circa 1959, flashing the jazz, the drugs and the politics. Kaufman, as David Henderson explains in the extensive biographical introduction, was dead of emphysema by age 60. During his most creative years, he was an addict and a psychological mess. When Allen Ginsberg wrote (in "Howl") of "the best minds of [his] generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked," he may well have been thinking of Kaufman.-- generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked," he may well have been thinking of Kaufman.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

In the introduction to this gathering of typically idiosyncratic, typically beat poems, a writer-activist says that Kaufman (1925^-86) "was actually the man that Herb Caen [San Francisco's famous gossip columnist] coined the term `Beatnik' to describe." Kaufman was black and well self-educated, a former merchant mariner who became a poet and thereafter never held a job, a permanent revolutionary in politics as well as culture, a formidable partyer who got himself eighty-sixed out of most of the bars in San Francisco's bohemian North Beach neighborhood, a Buddhist who (penitentially?) gave up talking for years until the U.S. got out of Vietnam, and a very public poet who ran down busy streets and hopped on cars to scream out his poems. His inspirations were primarily revolution, black consciousness, and jazz. His poetic manner was almost always surrealist: his work abounds with the surprising and incongruous, and often it doesn't make much sense. But the poems about jazz can be sweet and cool, and they will probably last. Ray Olson

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Coffee House Press; First edition. edition (February 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1566890381
• ISBN-13: 978-1566890380
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #139,816 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Poet's Poet, October 13, 2003

By 

Matt Levine (Atlanta, GA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Cranial Guitar (Paperback)

Whenever I start to believe, I am a poet, I read this to remind me I am not.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Effortless Grace, December 14, 2002

By 

M. Hori "Jesse Glass" (Urayasu, Chiba Japan) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Cranial Guitar (Paperback)

Of all the Beat poets, Bob Kauffman was the most naturally gifted. One gets the feeling that Kauffman dashed most of these poems off by cafe or bar light, and that's a big part of their power and their charm. These poems are not "finished" in the same sense as the standard, tenured faculty M.F.A. drivel that's defined as POETRY these ticky-tacky days. Rather, they are invitations: doorways into another time, place, and state of mind, and they're as pumped full of virtu (effortless grace) as a bop solo on the far side of midnight.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The True Beatnik, June 13, 2000

By 

Erren Geraud Kelly - See all my reviews

This review is from: Cranial Guitar (Paperback)

jazz, surrealism, and absurdism, all clash together in this splendid volume of work. kaufman was a contemporary of jack kerouac,allen ginsberg, leroi jones, and other beat luminaries of the 50's and 60's. he is credited with coining the term, "beat" and was the unofficial poet laureate of san francisco's north beach area.reclusive and mysterious, he spent many of his readings, reciting his poems from memory; very few volumes of his poems were in print;there were only three known books of his work: " The Ancient Rain," " Solitudes Crowded with Loneliness" and " Golden Sardine." his poetic influences are many, such as rimbaud and hart crane, but jazz is always at the heart of his work...to capture the essence of this brilliant poet, check out such pieces as " would you wear my eyes?" " i, too, know what i am not," and " walking parker home"