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

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.

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"

Bob Kaufman is my favorite poet of all-time. This a great collection because it includes all of Golden Sardine, along with selections from Solitudes Crowded With Loneliness, the Ancient Rain and Uncollected Works. There's also a great introduction.

This is the book to get to complete the Bob Kaufman collection if you do not already have the hard to find Golden Sardine. It's reprinted in its entirety along with some extras making it an important addition to the unfortunately short Kaufman oeuvre. It's unfortunately short because most of what Bob Kaufman wrote was not preserved in typeset. It was preserved on napkins, lost scraps of papers, and in the ears of those fortunate enough to hear him during his North Beach Days.

One reviewer commented that this text is overrated. I completely disagree. While Golden Sardine is not his strongest of the three, it is extremely creative, surreal and mind-bending. There's also a sweetness that permeates it all. The sample, as is typical, gives you the introduction and the first poem about Carl Chessman which is atypical. Not that there is a typical Bob Kaufman poem. There is not. Here are a few stanzas taken from Golden Sardine to give you an idea of his breadth:

"Alien winds sweeping the highway
fling the dust of medicine men,
long dead,
in the california afternoon

Into the floating eyes
of spitting gadget salesmen,
eating murdered hot dogs,
in the california afternoon."

"I wish that whoever it is inside of me,
would stop all that moving around,
& go to sleep, another sleepless year
like the last one will drive me sane."

"I put my eyes on a diet, my tears are gaining too much weight."

Reading Bob Kaufman's poems over and over never gets old. I only wish that he had published more. If you can't get enough Kaufman like me, try Mel Clay's impressionistic biography and Neeli Cherkovski's book of poems Elegy to Bob Kaufman. Both are outstanding works of art and give you a feel for what it was actually like to be with the great bard.

This book is not really a representative selection of Kaufman's poems.

It contains the entirety of the out-of-print Golden Sardine (from the City Lights Pocket Poets series), along with 14 pieces from Solitudes Crowded with Loneliness, a mere 8 poems from The Ancient Rain, and 8 previously uncollected poems. So, you get Golden Sardine + 30 more poems.

This book does not make up for having Solitudes Crowded with Loneliness and The Ancient Rain. Most of my favorite poems from those books are not included in this collection. The Ancient Rain probably has most of my favorite Kaufman poems.

And how are Kaufman's poems? Well, one gets the impression that Kaufman was mentally ill or on a lot of drugs or both --- and extremely talented on top of that. I am really impressed by about 10% of his poems, and the rest just don't quite do it for me. But when he's on, he pulls things off that I don't get from any other poet. He occasionally has an effortlessly perfect surrealism. One example off the top of my head -- "Fish go naked all their lives. When caught, they die of embarrassment."

They say he was heralded by surrealists, and the French called him "the Black Rimbaud." I've read that he was arrested constantly for his wild behavior, sometimes several times a week. And they say he didn't write down many of his poems, that they were transcribed by his wife as he spontaneously recited them. So you get the sense that he was a true madman poet, and that his surrealism is not a put-on, but rather an honest description of his state of mind. (I'd like to read Jazz Jail and God by Mel Clay, an impressionistic biography.)

So, if you're into the beats, Kaufman is definitely worth checking out. He maintains a certain amount of traditional poetic structure in his poems -- as opposed to say Ginsberg's sprawling experimental epics -- so even people who aren't into the beats might find something they like in Kaufman, especially if you're into surrealism.

Check him out. This book is as good a place to start as any.

I read a lot of poetry, and other than Ancient Rain, this book was weak.

This compilation contains some poems from his book, "Solitudes Crowded with Loneliness," which I also bought, but there are also enough other poems in here from his ouvre to please most of his fans. Kaufman is not as well-known a name as Kerouac or Ginsberg, but he should be....in part because he influenced them both, but mainly because he was a GREAT poet. Like, dig, man!!