Customer Reviews

Solitudes Crowded with Loneliness

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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.

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.

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.

To those young poets who take part in poetry slams...check out Kaufman. All of his poetry was improvised into being, he never wrote anything down. His wife kept up a steady stream of shorthand, then transcribed it...if not for her, we'd never know how great Kaufman really was. His poetry is lyrical, funny, touching and surreal all at the same time. You have to read it to believe it!