Solitudes Crowded with Loneliness [Paperback]

Bob Kaufman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 17, 1965

Published in 1965, Solitudes Crowded with Loneliness assembles ten years' work of Bob Kaufman, celebrated in San Francisco as the original Beat and in France as "the American Rimbaud."

Kaufman promotes a spontaneous, prophetic verse, mixing street talk and jazz with vision. Solitudes Crowded with Loneliness contains odes to Charles Mingus, Hart Crane, Ray Charles, and Albert Camus as well as love lyrics, political rants, "Prison Poems," and the prose meditation "Second April."

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Bob Kaufman, one of fourteen children born in Louisiana to a German Jewish father and a black Catholic mother, ran away to sea when he was thirteen, circling the globe nine times in the next twenty years. In the 1950s, when working as a waiter at the Los Angeles Hilton, he met another erstwhile member of the Merchant Marine, Jack Kerouac, and soon thereafter both moved north to found, along withe Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, and others, the San Francisco literary "renaissance" of the time.

Product Details

• Paperback: 96 pages
• Publisher: New Directions (January 17, 1965)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0811200760
• ISBN-13: 978-0811200769
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #234,848 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #49 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Literature & Fiction > World Literature > United States > Poetry

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars ghost of verse, May 7, 2003

By 

J. Menesini "Johnny Squaw" (Pittsburgh, PA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Solitudes Crowded with Loneliness (Paperback)

Bob Kaufman was one of two things, highly overlooked, and cursed with genius. He was of the San Francisco Renaissance, Gary Snyder, Michael McClure, et al. A BEAT, for lack of better...hailed by the French as the American Rimbaud. His writing I liken to the paintings of Jean Michel Basquiat, for their paranoid intensity, powerful confrontation, and schizophrenic cognizance. Like Basquiat, Kaufman's life was lived fast and blazing, like a nova, or shooting star, beautiful to watch and quick to collapse. He was the best of the so-called BEAT writers, his poetry is true jazz and of the streets. Le pauvre garcon, mon couer mon dieux, encre en feu.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best Place to Start For Kaufman -, November 30, 2008

By 

Publicagent "Publicagent" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Solitudes Crowded with Loneliness (Paperback)

I have read this book several times and just finished reading it again. It gets better each time. This is the best place to start for Bob Kaufman's work because it contains a wide sampling of some of his best work. His most humorous poem is included in the Abomunist Manifesto. There are a half dozen or so short poems inspired by jazz that give tribute to some of the jazz greats. There are longer prose poems such as Second April that take quite a mind to wrap around. There are zen-like surrealist poems where Bob Kaufman does things like shake his head and watch it fall off. The poems are playful yet mature, visionary yet lyric, and incredibly creative. Solitudes Crowded with Loneliness is a must read for anyone interested in black history, jazz history, the beats, surrealist poetry, jail poetry (a section in itself) and truly original american poetry. Here are some excerpts of poems taken while flipping through...

"My face is covered with dead nations;
My hair is littered with drying ragweed.
Bitter raisins drip haphazardly from my nostrils
While schools of glowing minnows swim from my mouth."

"Sometimes, when the wind is blowing in my hair,
I cry, because its coolness is too beautiful."

There are poems dedicated to Ray Charles, Allen Ginsberg, Albert Camus, Hart Crane, his father, the wind, Hiroshima's children and a whole lot more. I think that Kaufman is the greatest of all the Beat poets. Everything about him is honest, cool, insightful and electrifying. I only wish that he had published more. (Instead he delivered poems impromptu in public or left them on napkins in cafes). Read read read and read again.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Bobby Kaufman was the black Rimbaud, August 30, 2005

By 

S. Ihad (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Solitudes Crowded with Loneliness (Paperback)

I met him once in caffe Trieste in the late 70's. Bought him a cup of coffee and he read me a poem. I didn't really know him then but later I discovered him and his poetry has sustained me ever since. Forget Ginsberg, Corso and even Kerouac. Bob was the real deal and still is. His lines were from the depth of his guts -- tough, honest and beautiful. Read him and when you're broken down enough you'll understand what I mean.