Search using this query type:

Advanced Search (Items only)

Kaufman, Bob

Bob Kaufman

An inspiration for Allen Ginsberg and other Beat writers and possibly the inventor of the term “beatnik,” Bob Kaufman (1925-1986) also influenced Amiri Baraka and the Black Arts movement.  Born in New Orleans to a part-Jewish father and a black Catholic mother, Kaufman’s poetry adopted the improvisational bravado and harmonic intricacy of Bebop jazz—a debt he acknowledged when naming his only son Parker, in honor of the famous bop saxophonist.  While he preferred to leave his performative verse unwritten, his poems were eventually collected in the New Directions books Solitudes Crowded with Loneliness (1965) and The Ancient Rain: Poems 1956-1978 (1981).  His diverse thoughts on aesthetics were assembled in the earlier prose broadsides Abomunist Manifesto (1959), Second April (1959), and Does the Secret Mind Whisper? (1960).  Kaufman identified with the bohemian life of the proto-surrealist poet Arthur Rimbaud, and the French returned the favor by christening him “Rimbaud noir” and translating his poetry.  Less sympathetic, the FBI first became interested in Kaufman in 1950 as a “degenerate” member of the Communist Party, and continued to shadow him through 1970.

Kaufman - All

Title
Kaufman, Bob

Description
FBI documents studying Bob Kaufman.

Creator
FBI

Publisher
FBI

Date
1950-1970

Rights
Material is in the public domain.

Format
text, 42 PDFs, 400 ppi

Language
English

Type
text

Coverage
1950-1970