Remembering Bob Kaufman

                            

Today we remember Beat poet Bob Kaufman, who died on this date -- January 12 -- in 1986.  He appeared as Chuck Berman in Jack Kerouac's Desolation Angels.

You can read Kaufman's bio and some of his poetry by clicking HERE. Or click HERE for an excellent essay about Kaufman in Beatdom. Kaufman took a vow of silence the day President Kennedy was assassinated* and didn't speak until the end of the Vietnam War. That's an impressive feat. He broke his silence by reading one of his poems, "All Those Ships That Never Sailed."

Kaufman was part of the Beat poetry movement in San Francisco. He started the journal, Beatitude, with Allen Ginsberg and others. A collection of his poetry was published by City Lights in November 2019 (available HERE).

Interestingly -- to me at least -- the couple of times that he is mentioned in Gerald Nicosia's Memory Babe: A Critical Biography of Jack Kerouac, Kaufman is partying with Jack at significant transition points: once right after Gary Snyder leaves for Japan, and once right after Jack leaves Ferlinghetti's cabin in Big Sur. No references to Kaufman appear in the index to the two books of Kerouac's letters edited by Ann Charters, nor is he mentioned in the index of Kerouac's published journals, Windblown World.

I get the sense that Kaufman is generally underestimated as a poet -- you would do well to check out his work.

RIP, Mr. Kaufman.

*Tangential note: I just finished reading Dick Gregory's The Man Who Knew Too Much, the story of Richard Case Nagall and his role in the Kennedy assassination saga. It is a lengthy and detailed account of an intriguing player in the whole rotten mess, and I highly recommend it. The stuff we don't know about the workings of our own government, especially the intelligence- and security-related agencies, is mind-blowing. Some of that stuff is unknown because people don't take the time to read or they dismiss the Dick Gregory's of the world, and some is unknown because of the sinister steps our own government takes to keep certain facts secret. After all, we can't let it be known that the CIA was involved in killing a President, can we? Cue the surveillance to start now that I typed that last sentence.

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