"A lyricist of stunning soulfulness and delicacy." - San Francisco Examiner Chronicle
"As an African American Beat poet, Kaufman was able to create a poetics of dedications marked with spontaneity, musicality, and the deadly lucidity of the outcast." - American Book Review
At the forefront of the Beat movement, Kaufman was active (except for a decade long self-imposed interval of silence) on the poetry scenes of San Francisco’s North Beach and New York’s Lower East Side and Village from the 1950s through the 1980s. Well-known for his Abomunist Manifesto, Kaufman attained cult-figure status as an African American Beat poet. Combining street wisdom with insights from art and history, blending high and popular culture, Kaufman’s poetry reflects a singular wit and lyricism that has earned him the respect of poets and readers worldwide.
About Bob Kaufman
"He wasn’t just political, he was metaphysical, psychological, surrealist, and enlightened in extending his care into the whole society of poetry, seeing that as the revolution. There was a kind of psychological revolution going on along with the liberation of the word." - Allen Ginsberg
"He was actually the man that Herb Caen coined the term `Beatnik’ to describe." - Jerry Kamstra
"He lived it quick. He lived it fast. He was a real poet. How many real poets can you meet in your life? He was close to what was happening and he was out of it. He was into some magic of his own. He had magic." - Jack Micheline
The only major collection available of the late Bob Kaufman’s classic works, Cranial Guitar contains selections from The Ancient Rain and Solitudes Crowded With Lonelinesss, the entire text of the long-out-of-print Golden Sardine, as well as poems that have never appeared in book form, including the last one Kaufman wrote before his death in 1986.
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