Customer Reviews (3)

The Ancient Rain is Falling
The Ancient Rain is one of my favorite poems of all-time. It is a relatively long poem, and I have read it at least seven times. I love the way that Bob Kaufman witnesses the ancient rain falling over the history of america and the future that is to come. The entire text, like all of Kaufman's work, is phenomenal. If you have never read Kaufman, you are seriously missing out. He lived the life of a true poet and his perspective on the world is truly unique. His visions are surrealist, ingenious, full of jazz and radical politics. I read a fair amount of poetry, and Bob Kaufman has become my favorite. He is an American Legend that in time will only grow.

"...It shall be brown rain that fell on the day Crispus Attucks died. It shall be the Ancient Rain that fell on July Fourth, 1776, when America became alive. In America, the Ancient Rain is beginning to fall again. The Ancient Rain falls from a distant secret sky. It shall fall here on America, which alone, remains alive, on this earth of death. The Ancient Rain is supreme and is aware of things that have never happened. The Ancient Rain shall be brilliant yellow as it was on the day Custer died. The Ancient Rain is the source of all things, the Ancient Rain knows all secrets, the Ancient Rain illuminates America. The Ancient Rain shall kill genocide..."

It's a long poem, that's just a taste. I have always wanted to read this poem out loud wherever I am at on the 4th of July. Kaufman did not often write about America, but he was struck to the core when JFK died and is rumored to have taken a vow of silence that lasted for many years. The Ancient Rain may have been part of his lifting of the silence as he states in the poem that it "shall be blue rain like the rain that fell when John Fitzgerald Kennedy died," to close his opening stanza.

Bob Kaufman is the real deal still on is line of flight
from San Francisco beat scene into utter poetic beatitude and broken forms of beauty and mongrel utterance.If there is anybody up ahead of Jack Spicer and Allen Ginsberg in the bay area poetics of experimentation and abomunation, it is Bob Kaufman. He comes out of Great Time of literature ahead of us, postmodern and material-real all at once.No wonder Spicer had to (symbolically) kill him off in Tower of Babel, he felt dimininished and threatened by his love and his poetics (but of course Spicer mocked himself as the minor academic poet John Ralston, safe and non-Blakean).Kaufman lives on in the "ancient rains" and imperial formations of queer and language-writing San Francisco, a long long time ahead.

Excellent book
Bob Kaufman is a great poet.He is one of the beat poets, speaking in coffee houses and on the streets of San Francisco.He strived to be anonymous.Read this book.Once you have done that, read his words out loud, and with passion.Its great. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Best Place to Start For Kaufman-
I have read this book several times and just finished reading it again. It gets better each time. This is the best place to start for Bob Kaufman's work because it contains a wide sampling of some of his best work. His most humorous poem is included in the Abomunist Manifesto. There are a half dozen or so short poems inspired by jazz that give tribute to some of the jazz greats. There are longer prose poems such as Second April that take quite a mind to wrap around. There are zen-like surrealist poems where Bob Kaufman does things like shake his head and watch it fall off. The poems are playful yet mature, visionary yet lyric, and incredibly creative. Solitudes Crowded with Loneliness is a must read for anyone interested in black history, jazz history, the beats, surrealist poetry, jail poetry (a section in itself) and truly original american poetry. Here are some excerpts of poems taken while flipping through...

"My face is covered with dead nations;
My hair is littered with drying ragweed.
Bitter raisins drip haphazardly from my nostrils
While schools of glowing minnows swim from my mouth."

"Sometimes, when the wind is blowing in my hair,
I cry, because its coolness is too beautiful."

There are poems dedicated to Ray Charles, Allen Ginsberg, Albert Camus, Hart Crane, his father, the wind, Hiroshima's children and a whole lot more. I think that Kaufman is the greatest of all the Beat poets. Everything about him is honest, cool, insightful and electrifying. I only wish that he had published more. (Instead he delivered poems impromptu in public or left them on napkins in cafes). Read read read and read again.

Bobby Kaufman was the black Rimbaud
I met him once in caffe Trieste in the late 70's. Bought him a cup of coffee and he read me a poem. I didn't really know him then but later I discovered him and his poetry has sustained me ever since. Forget Ginsberg, Corso and even Kerouac. Bob was the real deal and still is. His lines were from the depth of his guts -- tough, honest and beautiful. Read him and when you're broken down enough you'll understand what I mean.

What a great riffer!
To those young poets who take part in poetry slams...check out Kaufman.All of his poetry was improvised into being, he never wrote anything down.His wife kept up a steady stream of shorthand, then transcribed it...if not for her, we'd never know how great Kaufman really was.His poetry is lyrical, funny, touching and surreal all at the same time.You have to read it to believe it!

ghost of verse
Bob Kaufman was one of two things, highly overlooked, and cursed with genius.He was of the San Francisco Renaissance, Gary Snyder, Michael McClure, et al.A BEAT, for lack of better...hailed by the French as the American Rimbaud.His writing I liken to the paintings of Jean Michel Basquiat, for their paranoid intensity, powerful confrontation, and schizophrenic cognizance.Like Basquiat, Kaufman's life was lived fast and blazing, like a nova, or shooting star, beautiful to watch and quick to collapse.He was the best of the so-called BEAT writers, his poetry is true jazz and of the streets.Le pauvre garcon, mon couer mon dieux, encre en feu. ... Read more

Product Description
Illustrations and rhyming text introduce the tracks left by a dog, skunk, bear, elephant, swan, turtle, and other animals. ... Read more

Product Description
incl the entire long out-of-print GOLDEN SARDINE ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

Nice Kaufman Collection
Bob Kaufman is my favorite poet of all-time. This a great collection because it includes all of Golden Sardine, along with selections from Solitudes Crowded With Loneliness, the Ancient Rain and Uncollected Works. There's also a great introduction.

This is the book to get to complete the Bob Kaufman collection if you do not already have the hard to find Golden Sardine. It's reprinted in its entirety along with some extras making it an important addition to the unfortunately short Kaufman oeuvre. It's unfortunately short because most of what Bob Kaufman wrote was not preserved in typeset. It was preserved on napkins, lost scraps of papers, and in the ears of those fortunate enough to hear him during his North Beach Days.

One reviewer commented that this text is overrated. I completely disagree. While Golden Sardine is not his strongest of the three, it is extremely creative, surreal and mind-bending. There's also a sweetness that permeates it all. The sample, as is typical, gives you the introduction and the first poem about Carl Chessman which is atypical. Not that there is a typical Bob Kaufman poem. There is not. Here are a few stanzas taken from Golden Sardine to give you an idea of his breadth:

"Alien winds sweeping the highway
fling the dust of medicine men,
long dead,
in the california afternoon

Into the floating eyes
of spitting gadget salesmen,
eating murdered hot dogs,
in the california afternoon."

"I wish that whoever it is inside of me,
would stop all that moving around,
& go to sleep, another sleepless year
like the last one will drive me sane."

"I put my eyes on a diet, my tears are gaining too much weight."

Reading Bob Kaufman's poems over and over never gets old. I only wish that he had published more. If you can't get enough Kaufman like me, try Mel Clay's impressionistic biography and Neeli Cherkovski's book of poems Elegy to Bob Kaufman. Both are outstanding works of art and give you a feel for what it was actually like to be with the great bard.

Golden Sardine & More
This book is not really a representative selection of Kaufman's poems.

It contains the entirety of the out-of-print Golden Sardine (from the City Lights Pocket Poets series), along with 14 pieces from Solitudes Crowded with Loneliness, a mere 8 poems from The Ancient Rain, and 8 previously uncollected poems. So, you get Golden Sardine + 30 more poems.

This book does not make up for having Solitudes Crowded with Loneliness and The Ancient Rain. Most of my favorite poems from those books are not included in this collection. The Ancient Rain probably has most of my favorite Kaufman poems.

And how are Kaufman's poems? Well, one gets the impression that Kaufman was mentally ill or on a lot of drugs or both --- and extremely talented on top of that. I am really impressed by about 10% of his poems, and the rest just don't quite do it for me. But when he's on, he pulls things off that I don't get from any other poet. He occasionally has an effortlessly perfect surrealism. One example off the top of my head -- "Fish go naked all their lives. When caught, they die of embarrassment."

They say he was heralded by surrealists, and the French called him "the Black Rimbaud." I've read that he was arrested constantly for his wild behavior, sometimes several times a week. And they say he didn't write down many of his poems, that they were transcribed by his wife as he spontaneously recited them. So you get the sense that he was a true madman poet, and that his surrealism is not a put-on, but rather an honest description of his state of mind. (I'd like to read Jazz Jail and God by Mel Clay, an impressionistic biography.)

So, if you're into the beats, Kaufman is definitely worth checking out. He maintains a certain amount of traditional poetic structure in his poems -- as opposed to say Ginsberg's sprawling experimental epics -- so even people who aren't into the beats might find something they like in Kaufman, especially if you're into surrealism.

Check him out. This book is as good a place to start as any.

Overrated


I read a lot of poetry, and other than Ancient Rain, this book was weak.

Poet's Poet
Whenever I start to believe, I am a poet, I read this to remind me I am not.

Great compilaton of Kaufman
This compilation contains some poems from his book, "Solitudes Crowded with Loneliness," which I also bought, but there are also enough other poems in here from his ouvre to please most of his fans.Kaufman is not as well-known a name as Kerouac or Ginsberg, but he should be....in part because he influenced them both, but mainly because he was a GREAT poet.Like, dig, man!! ... Read more

Product Description
Biography of Beat poet Bob Kaufman.

Includes photographs and full bibliography of Bob Kaufman's work. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Poetry Bringing Poetry to Life
Very impressed with the prose of the text, reads very much like poetry, is poetry in fact.Grammar is used with poetic license and various images intersperse throughout.This book is not a standard biography, it does not go through the various facts of Bob Kaufman's life, there is not even that much information picked up about Bob Kaufman from reading it.But you get a sense of what his life was like.You enter Mel Clay's life searching for Bob through nonlinear rotating sections of conversation, tributes and imagery.It's really a beautiful read, and I wish that more poets wrote biographies in as fresh of a manner.If you're into prose poetry and like Kaufman's work who I think is one of the most underrated and greatest poets of all time, this is it.If you prefer more standard biographies, the only I have read is an excellent short one in Neeli Cherkovski's Whitman's Wild Children.Excellent Bibliography including all Kaufman appearances at the end, and nice photographs to accompany.

Support local bookstores if you can.

Amazon needs to improve their rating system. 4.65 stars.

Absolutely blown away...
I met Mel Clay perusing through the infamous Citylights Bookstore on Columbus Ave in San Francisco just last week. He started talking with me and we began discussing William S. Burrough's intense novel "Naked Lunch" and how it changed our lives. He also gave me a signed copy of this book, "Jazz -- Jail and God." I went home and read it, mostly because I was so excited that I had just met a famous author! I didn't know what to expect. But this book literally blew me away. It stirs up something inside you. You envision everything going on so perfectly. I can't describe it any better than that. But everyone who is interested in beat literature, the spoken word, or especially Bob Kaufman should definitely read this book. ... Read more

Product Description
long poem for late great Black Beat SF poet ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Cherkovski Brings Kaufman to Life
I read this book for the first time nearly ten years ago. At the time I was relatively unfamiliar with Kaufman's work. I read it for the second time just last week. I didn't stop until I had finished the entire text.

Neeli Cherkovski brings Bob Kaufman to life in this book. The poems give you a sense of what it was like to be with Bob. They reveal the words that he spoke, the things that he did, the way that he was. They dine together, sing together, morn together, roam San Francisco together. The poems express Neeli's visions of Bob as he sails across the bay dispersing his ashes into the sea. I think better than any other text I have read, these poems capture the spirit of Bob Kaufman. The best method for this is not a standard biography, but poetry itself.

Cherkovski's poems in this regard are superior to much that I have seen. I have glanced at other biographies written as poems, by Ed Sanders say, and have not been as impressed. Sometimes these poems feel like they are just biographies with line breaks. This is not the case at all with Cherkovski. Each poem stands alone. There is not even an attempt to compose anything resembling a biography. Yet when the elegy is said and done, we feel like we know Bob Kaufman substantially better.

"the truth is I'm not fully reconciled
to his death or his life, Gregory Corso
said he had the biggest ego
in the Beat Generation, I say
he was maddening behind
a veil of crazy sainthood/I mean
the man sang, he wrote
clear jazz poems, clean childhood
memories that flow
into the delta land
deep elegies to Charlie Parker
and bumpy roads
into the arc of April"

"Bobby found his town
an exquisite maze
of simple facts such as
a fast escape to Chinatown eateries
or a quick exchange in the local park
glances meant to be imprinted
on the brain"

If you're not familiar with Bob Kaufman's work, these poems may not resonate as strongly.But if you know Bob Kaufman, they really sing, and come to life, and you will probably whip through them as quickly as I did. Cherkovski has succeeded again. In memory of Bob Kaufman, a definite 5 stars.

sensational minimalist farewell from a true literary soulmat
This deeply heartfelt work, a succinct and thankfully neo unself-righteous lamentation by Neeli Cherkovski to and for his for late north beach, san francisco, comrade-in-poesy bob "Abommunist Manifesto"kaufman.This is Cherkovski's finest creative effort, at least among thoseof Cherk's works this reviewer has studied.Cherkovski, biographer ofgiants Ferlinghetti, Winans, and Bukowski, this time sets aside thejournalistic and laborious near drudgeries of biographer toil, insteadtranscending the literary common-place to break bread with the gods,specifically those gods who specialize in living poetry's highest calling. I mean this time out Cherkovski is Inspired!Nothing obtuse about this newwork; nothing hacklike; nothing testy nor negative nor put down-y.Kaufmanwas really a close friend and is so sorely missed by Cherkovski a readerwill have a tough time keeping eyes dry.One must wonder about the amountof affection he felt for his former roommate, charles bukowski, incomparison to the genuine love, admiration, deep abiding respect bothcreatively and as a simple pal for a pal, and now sorrow for his departedwalk-mate an laugh partner, for so many fun filled moments of joy, laughs,hilarious revelries and ribald north beach shared experiences...Buy thisgreat book for your library, for those shelves you maintain the very bestof cogent spiritual works packed with holy sacred precious elegaicrenderings of our master surviving poet/scribes - if this one doesn't grabat least a Nobel nomination for poetry - I'll astro- project to stockholmmyself to beat on their ignorant and yes illiterate doors!Cherkovskihas dominated Bay area literary activity for twenty years, mentoring hisnear peers gregory corso, michael McClure, and especially star studentharold "hotel nirvana" norse, to new heights of literary success- without Cherkovski's calm and enlightened hand, such writers would havestruggled so much more to bring lucid cohesion to their new stanzas.Thiselegy will last if we last; a work to bring walls of bigotry down as longas hate sticks around - FOR AS LONG AS THERE REMAINS ONE GOOD EAR ON EARTHTHIS ELEGY WILL BE HEARD AND LIVE FOREVER. Amen ... Read more

Customer Reviews (118)

it's been awhile since i read this book
but i remember my thoughts while reading it. icame away feeling that the author (zmuda) was making a WAY bigger picture of himself than what i had ever heard before. i'm a huge andy fan and have read, watched, listened to everything andy. when i read this book, i was truly surprised how much of what i had already (known) wasn't true, according to this book. so i'm left to wonder...do i believe this book and the author of this book who claims (virtually) that he invented andy, or do i trust what my eyes and ears tell me. i'm gonna go with andy on this one. and all of the seemingly sincere reviews that support the author of this book, are, in my opinion, fake. go ahead and blast this review with your negative ratings: i'm quite sure, andy would love it if you did!

A quick read for new and old Kaufman lovers
I'm not sure how I stumbled upon this read as I had never seen Andy Kaufman when he was alive (I'm 25). Once I picked it up I was unable to put it down. This is an excellent book with wonderful stories. By the end you will appreciate the true nature of friendship and feel like you know both Bob Zmuda and Andy Kaufman in a way that you never did before. Whoever you are Mr.X, you are a madman!

Excellent Read!
Nicely written book about Andy Kaufman and Bob Zmuda. For a diehard fan of Kaufman's...it's an excellent read!

I would recommend this book to my friends.

Great companion piece to "Lost In The Funhouse"
This book should be read along with "Lost In The Funhouse: The Life and Mind of Andy Kaufman" by Bill Zehme for a more complete view of Andy.

"...Revealed!" is a great memoir from Andy's closest collaborator, Bob Zmuda's anecdotes are incredibly entertaining.The thing is though they are just anecdotes, a collection of stories, this is not a flowing narrative, it's just fun.You really could open up to any page and be entertained.

When it comes to Andy's life before he met up with Bob, it's a lot of "Andy told me this..." , they are second hand stories.That's why "Lost In The Fun House" is so essential to get the full story of Andy's life (as much as it can be collected or believed).

Buy this book, it's great!

I agree: Mr. X himself is worth your time
If "Man on the Moon," which depicted the trite TV reruns of Kaufman's wrestling shows bored you, you should read this book. Milos Foreman probably believed that Zmuda's insights were unappealing to mass movie audiences... which is why his film failed.

...and I must write that I have read biographies about Napoleon Bonaparte, Benjamin Franklin, Friedrich Nietzsche, etc... but no one fascinates me quite as much as "Mr. X." When I read Zmuda's descriptions about him, I laughed so hard that I almost literally could not breathe. Zmuda did not diagnose him, but allow me: a paranoid schizophrenic who has a seemingly bottomless war chest. He is "carpe diem" gone absolutely insane.... and a part of me hopes he is alive. ... Read more

Product Description
Kansas is a bird-watcher's paradise, with its key location at the hub of the hemisphere's migration corridors and exceptional habitat diversity; 470 avian species have been documented within its borders. From spectacularly beautiful birds like Painted Buntings to elegant migrants like Hudsonian Godwits, birders can find abundant rewards every time they take to the field.

The Guide to Kansas Birds and Birding Hot Spots focuses on 295 species that are most likely to be encountered in the state. It helps occasional day-trippers or backyard observers identify and learn about birds that regularly occur in Kansas, with stunning color photos that enable those new to the hobby to identify their discoveries, plus tips on where to search for these species with the greatest likelihood of success.

Gress and Janzen have produced an exceptionally well-organized guide that divides birds into 18 groups based on similarity in appearance, habitat, or behavior, following taxonomic order only partially to make identification easier for the beginner. The entry for each bird gives its size, identifying features (including sexual and seasonal distinctions), and where and when it can be found. And each account includes a brilliant color photo of an adult of the species, with additional views of selected birds to illustrate male, female, or juvenile plumages.

The authors point out the best birding locations in the state--more than two dozen hot spots of which they have intimate knowledge--that reflect utterly different bird communities thriving only a few hours apart. They also provide a checklist for all state birds, a calendar of Kansas bird activity, and recommendations for binoculars and other field guides. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Great guide

After reading the positive reviews about this book I purchased two.One was a gift to someone who had wanted to be able to identify birds she had seen and one was for personal use.The gift was well received and exactly what I had hoped it would be.The pictures make it easy to identify birds.Excellent reference guide!

Comprehensive
Easy to read, more than just a reference. Some prior bird knowledge is helpful - it is faster to look up a bird if you know it is a warbler vs. an insect catcher. The photos are amazing. Very enjoyable read.

Kansas Birding
Terrific book - just what I was looking for.Has been a great help.

Kansas Birds
It is very through and informative and I would recommend it to any one trying to identify birds.

Great for beginners and experts
A fine gem, summarizing the birds most likely to be seen in Kansas. Each bird gets a full page with photo and helpful information like how to recognize them, where to find them, and when to find them. The photos are excellent! New birders will quickly find a species without sorting through the clutter of a larger field guide. Experienced birders may glean details such as where and when to find target species. ... Read more

Product Description
More than 20 years before his death, Beat poet Bob Kaufman (1925 - 1986) took a vow of silence that he honored for all but a handful of his remaining years. Unfortunately, this silence has seemingly made it easy to dismiss Kaufman in favor of self-promoting Beats such as Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac. A growing number of scholars, however, are taking the time to reexamine the poetry of Bob Kaufman. As they do, they propose various explanations for his silence, which infects both his poetry and his biography.This book offers a new theory. It argues for a historical reading. It posits that Kaufman uses silence to respond to the oppressive con­formity of the mid-twentieth century. By remaining obscure, Kaufman rejects the suburban middle-class value system of the time and pro­hibits the reader from placing him within taxonomies based on class, race, and gender. As such, Kaufman forces the reader to start from scratch when asking questions about identity. Jazz, then, becomes the ideal tool for Kaufman because it works through spontaneity and im­provisation and the defeat of embedded forms and structures. ... Read more

Product Description
Humanessence Publishing Co. (San Francisco), blue stapled pictorial wraps, stated: Publication date: February 1974, [ first edition ], unpaginated, POETRY ... Read more

Product Description
High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Bob Kaufman (April 18, 1925 - January 12, 1986), born Robert Garnell Kaufman, was an American Beat poet and surrealist inspired by jazz music. In France, where his poetry had a large following, he was known as the "American Rimbaud." Born in New Orleans, Louisiana, Kaufman was one of fourteen children, the son of a German-Jewish father and a Roman Catholic Black mother from Martinique; his grandmother practiced voodoo. At age eighteen, Kaufman joined the United States Merchant Marine, which he left in the early 1940s to briefly study literature at New York's The New School. There, he met William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg. In 1944 Bob Kaufman married Ida Berrocal. They had one daughter, Antoinette Victoria Marie (Nagle), born in New York City in 1945 (died 2008). Kaufman moved to San Francisco's North Beach in 1958 and remained there for most of the rest of his life. He married Eileen Singe in 1958; they had one child, Parker, named for Charlie Parker. ... Read more

Product Description
This digital document, covering the life and work of Bob (Garnell) Kaufman, is an entry from Contemporary Authors, a reference volume published by Thompson Gale. The length of the entry is 1922 words. The page length listed above is based on a typical 300-word page. Although the exact content of each entry from this volume can vary, typical entries include the following information:

• Place and date of birth and death (if deceased)
• Family members
• Education
• Professional associations and honors
• Employment
• Writings, including books and periodicals
• A description of the author's work
• References to further readings about the author