San Fran, hipster land,
Jazz sounds, wig sounds,
Earthquake sounds, others,
Allen on Chestnut Street,
Giving poetry to squares,
Corso on knees, pleading,
God eyes.
Rexroth, Ferlinghetti,
Swinging, in cellars,
Kerouac at Locke’s,
[…]

Bob Kaufman is said to have circumnavigated the globe nine times, but it is unclear what, if any, time he spent in Paris, France. ”His face is a map: of Africa, of the West Indies and the Caribbean, of his beloved New Orleans and the birth of jazz,” Raymond Foye, his friend and faithful follower, remembers. ”It is the face of a holy man on Earth as a hero and martyr in the guise of a hipster and flaneur.”

The Art of Reading. Bob Kaufman: West Coast Sounds gives voice to the poet who—after performing his poetry in coffee shops and on city streets—took a vow of silence between the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the end of the Vietnam War. The very same poet who founded Beatitude with Allen Ginsberg and others. The obscure American poet who gained greater fame in France, being heralded there as the ”Black Rimbaud.”

Led by Precious Brown.

• Solitudes Crowded with Loneliness. (1965)
• The Golden Sardine. (1967)
• The Ancient Rain: Poems 1956-1978. (1981.) 

• 13 January 
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