Bob Kaufman
Bob Kaufman was a distinctive figure in the Beat Generation, known for his innovative and jazz-influenced poetry. Born to a German Orthodox Jewish father and a Catholic mother from Martinique, Kaufman's upbringing was marked by cultural and religious diversity. He spent two decades as a merchant mariner before moving to New York City, where he studied literature and connected with prominent Beat writers like William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg. In the late 1950s, he relocated to San Francisco, immersing himself in the vibrant North Beach scene, and earned the title "King of Bebop" for his improvisational style.
Despite his influence on contemporaries such as Amiri Baraka and Kenneth Rexroth, Kaufman was reluctant to publish, leading to a posthumous recognition that overshadowed his contributions during his lifetime. His only published work, *Solitudes Crowded with Loneliness*, gained more acclaim abroad than in the U.S. Kaufman's life took a tumultuous turn marked by poverty and addiction, culminating in a self-imposed vow of silence after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. He broke this silence only with the end of the Vietnam War and continued to create poetry until his death in 1986. Today, he is remembered as an influential yet often overlooked voice within the Beat movement.
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Bob Kaufman
- Born: April 18, 1925
- Birthplace: New Orleans, Louisiana
- Died: January 12, 1986
- Place of death: San Francisco, California
Biography
The eleventh of thirteen children born to a German Orthodox Jewish father and a devoutly Catholic black mother native to Martinique (and the daughter of a voodoo adherent), Bob Kaufman was in a sense destined for nonconformity. After dividing his childhood between synagogues and churches, at thirteen he ran away to join the merchant marines, in which he served for the next twenty years, sailing the world while surviving three shipwrecks. One of Kaufman’s shipmates served as his first tutor, urging him to read the classics.
Kaufman left his seagoing life in the 1940’s and moved to New York City, where he studied literature at the New School for Social Research and became acquainted with William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, both of whom went on to become giants among the Beat Generation of writers. With Burroughs and Ginsberg, Kaufman migrated in the late 1950’s to San Francisco, where in 1958 he married for the second time. With his wife Eileen, a writer and literary agent, Kaufman had two children, a daughter, Tony, and a son, Parker.
Kaufman spent most of his time in the bars and coffeehouses of San Francisco’s North Beach district, drawing inspiration from such jazz adepts as Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Miles Davis. Soon Kaufman was propounding his own improvisational, experimental work, poetry so original and so conspicuously jazzy that he became known as the King of Bebop. Kaufman’s verse was at once highly influential and ephemeral, for although distinct traces of it can be found in the work of better-known Beat poets, such as Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) and Kenneth Rexroth, Kaufman was loathe to commit his verses to paper. After he did so at the urging of his wife, three of his broadsides were collected and published in book form as Solitudes Crowded with Loneliness. The book created little excitement in the United States but made Kaufman a celebrity abroad.
In 1960, after being nominated for the prestigious British Guinness Poetry Award but losing out to T. S. Eliot, Kaufman was invited to read his poetry at Harvard University. He spent the following decade back in New York, where his life followed a downward course into poverty, methedrine addiction, and imprisonment. After the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Kaufman took a vow of silence which he characterized as Buddhist, but which others attributed to his addiction. In any event, Kaufman did not speak for more than a decade, only breaking his silence on the day the Vietnam War ended. The next few years were intensely creative ones for Kaufman, whose work became more alienated, provocative, and challenging, reflecting a new found religious mysticism. In 1978, shortly before withdrawing once again into silence, Kaufman told his editor, “I want to be anonymous. . . my ambition is to be completely forgotten.” Kaufman continued to create poetry until his death from emphysema in 1986. He is remembered as the great unsung poet of the Beat Generation.