Cranial Guitar by Bob Kaufman

First published: 1996

Type of work: Poetry

The Poems

Cranial Guitaris a posthumous collection of poems by Bob Kaufman that includes all of the poems from Golden Sardine (1967), selections from Solitudes Crowded with Loneliness (1965), selections from The Ancient Rain: Poems, 1956-1978 (1981), and additional works previously unpublished in book form. The poems in Golden Sardine challenge readers with unconventional expression, even absurdity, but Kaufman’s purpose is to affirm life. In “Carl Chessman Interviews the P.T.A. in His Swank Gas Chamber Before Leaving on His Annual Inspection of Capital, Tour of Northern California Death Universities, Happy,” Kaufman protests the state’s execution of Chessman, asserting, “No one is guilty of anything at any time anywhere in anyplace, ask those Hebrew ecstatics up there on the trees of sorrow.” In “The Enormous Gas Bill at the Dwarf Factory. A Horror Movie to Be Shot With Eyes,” Kaufman produces an absurd film scenario that resumes his challenge of the death penalty for Chessman. Kaufman pays homage to the executed Chessman, who “was an American buffalo filled with glistening embryos.”

Kaufman’s protests against capital punishment leave him uncertain and troubled. Kaufman, in “A Terror Is More Certain,” says, “I want to be allowed not to be.” In “Walking Hot Seasons,” the poet confesses, “Everything that never happened is my fault.” In “Results of a Lie Detector Test,” Kaufman regretfully says he has “stolen a month” and “faces the accusing fingers of children who will never be born.” He pledges not to repeat his theft of a month, but qualifies his pledge, admitting that desperation may drive him to repeat the act.

Emerging from doubt, Kaufman finds joy in love and jazz. In “Come,” he proclaims, “All that I touch,/ Blossoms from/ a thorn,/ arosearose.” In “Round About Midnight,” jazz references combine with references to “a jazz type chick” to create an atmosphere of music and intimacy. This combination of jazz and sensuality recurs in “Jazz Chick,” a poem that speaks of “Rivulets of trickling ecstasy/ From the alabaster pools of Jazz.”

Beyond joy, jazz offers redemption. In “Tequila Jazz,” Kaufman writes, “Unseen wings of jazz,/ Flapping, flapping. Carry me off, carry me off.” In “Believe, Believe,” Kaufman musters his positive energy and generates advice: “Believe in the swinging sounds of jazz . . ./ Not the sick controllers,/ Who created only the Bomb.”

This positive outlook proves difficult to maintain, and in “Heavy Water Blues,” Kaufman declares, “I hope that when the machines finally take over,/ they won’t build men that break down,/ as soon as they’re paid for.” In “Suicide,” Kaufman comments on the “first man,” who “was an idealist,” but who upon learning that “the whole/ world, all of it, was all his,” used “a little piece of string, & a sharp stone” to kill himself.

Wavering between grief and ecstasy, Kaufman concludes Golden Sardine optimistically. In “Night Sung Sailor’s Prayer,” he writes, “Sing love and life and life and love/ All that lives is Holy,/ The unholiest, most holy all.” In “Plea,” Kaufman writes, “Seek and find Hiroshima’s children,/ Send them back, send them back.” In “O-Jazz-O,” Kaufman insists, “My father’s sound/ My mother’s sound,/ Is love,/ Is life.”

Selections from Solitudes Crowded with Loneliness celebrate art, artists, musicians, jazz, and history. In “Walking Parker Home,” Kaufman salutes Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, and especially Charlie Parker, who represent the “fierce dying of humans consumed/ In raging fires of Love.” In “Afterwards, They Shall Dance,” the poet acknowledges Maxwell Bodenheim, Dylan Thomas, Billie Holiday, Edgar Allan Poe, and Charles Baudelaire; in “Bagel Shop Jazz,” Kaufman describes “Shadow people” on the jazz scene, who speak “of Bird and Diz and Miles” and hope that “the beat is really the truth.” In “Bird With Painted Wings,” Kaufman refers to artists Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso, Amedeo Modigliani, Edgar Degas, and others, whose work interprets love, light, madness, truth, and sadness. In “To My Son Parker, Asleep in the Next Room,” Kaufman cites examples from the history of civilization, noting creativity and determination, proclaiming that people are “eternally free in all things.”

These poems are offset by poems about alienation. In “Would You Wear My Eyes?” Kaufman says, “I have walked on my walls each night/ Through strange landscapes in my head.” In “Abomunist Manifesto,” which concludes the selections from Solitudes Crowded with Loneliness, Kaufman says, “Abomunists do not feel pain no matter how much it hurts.” According to Kaufman, “Abomunists never compromise in their rejectionary philosophy.”

In selections from The Ancient Rain, Kaufman affirms life and God. In “All Those Ships That Never Sailed,” the poet grants new voyages to ships, new growth to flowers, and eternal life for the body. In “My Mysteries,” he writes, “God is my green-/ eyed one, whose power is/ Endless.” Renewings his dedication to poetry, Kaufman in “The Poet” writes, “The blood of the poet/ Must flow in his poem.” In “The Ancient Rain,” he declares, “All the symbols shall return to the realm of the symbolic and reality become the meaning again.”

A group of uncollected works ends Cranial Guitar. “Hank Lawler: Chorus” pays tribute to a genius “who worked out arithmetic problems in his head.” Lawler created “jazzy psalms, tribal histories in cubist and surrealist patterns.” In “Does the Secret Mind Whisper?” Kaufman creates his own surreal effects and ponders the problem of the atomic bomb.

Critical Context

Kaufman was an oral poet; that is, he recited his poems from memory in public, sometimes in clubs and cafés, sometimes on the streets. His process of composition was far from formal, and he often wrote poems on napkins or scraps of paper. He took no interest in developing a career as a writer and made little effort to gather his works or seek publication. His wife, Eileen, strove to create a written record of Kaufman’s poetry. In some instances, tape recordings of the poet’s readings were transcribed. Various poets and scholars maintained respect for Kaufman’s inventive imagination. Eileen Kaufman joined with Gerald Nicosia to gather works for Cranial Guitar, and with the cooperation of Coffee House Press in Minneapolis, Nicosia edited this volume of selected poems.

When Golden Sardine and Solitudes Crowded with Loneliness appeared, literary critics and academics found nothing worthy of attention. Because Kaufman was outlandish in his public recitations and rejected society’s conventions, he was an outsider—an easy target for abuse by police. Persistent in his dedication to poetry, Kaufman nevertheless won the respect of the bohemian community and now endures as a key figure among Beat writers.

Kaufman’s Jewish surname and varying descriptions of his heritage obscured the poet’s African American identity. Although he referred to the troubles of the South and the concerns of African Americans, he did not make African American issues the driving force of his work.

In American literature, Kaufman holds a strong place in the revival of oral poetry in the middle of the twentieth century. He was influenced by Andre Breton, Charles Baudelaire, Arthur Rimbaud, and Guillaume Apollinaire, as well as a range of visual artists and jazz musicians. These influences led Kaufman to become a surrealist poet and jazz writer.

Bibliography

Anderson, T. J. “Body and Soul: Bob Kaufman’s Golden Sardine.” African American Review 34, no. 2 (2000): 329-347. Studies Kaufman’s appropriation of the rhythms and tones of jazz.

Cherkovski, Neeli. “Celebrating Second April: Bob Kaufman.” In Whitman’s Wild Children. Venice, Calif.: Lapis Press, 1988. Cherkovski recalls his friendship with Kaufman.

Christian, Barbara. “Whatever Happened to Bob Kaufman.” In The Beats: Essays in Criticism, edited by Lee Bartlett. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1981. Calls attention to the importance of social protest and jazz in Kaufman’s work.

Damon, Maria. “Bob Kaufman, Poet: A Special Section.” Callaloo: A Journal of African American and African Arts and Letters 25, no. 1 (Winter, 2002): 105-231. This special section in Callaloo presents articles on Bob Kaufman by Aldon Lynn Nielsen, James Smethurst, Amor Kohli, Jeffrey Falla, Rod Hernandez, and Horace Coleman.

Henderson, David. Introduction to Cranial Guitar, edited by Gerald Nicosia. Minneapolis: Coffee House Press, 1996. Summarizes Kaufman’s career and quotes extensively from a two-hour radio documentary on Kaufman.

Kohli, Amor. “Black Skins, Beat Masks: Bob Kaufman and the Blackness of Jazz.” In Reconstructing the Beats. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. Sees Kaufman’s use of jazz performance as a form of protest.

Thomas, Lorenzo. “’Communicating by Horns’: Jazz and Redemption in the Poetry of the Beats and the Black Arts Movement.” African American Review 26, no. 2 (1992): 291-299. Draws a connection between jazz artists and the rebellion against conformity.

Winans, A. D. “Bob Kaufman.” American Poetry Review 29, no. 3 (May/June, 2000): 19-20. Offers a compact review of Kaufman’s life.