Bob Kaufman, Poet; Part 3

This is David Henderson, writer and producer of Bob Kaufman, Poet. In this second part we go from the beat scene of San Francisco to the Village in New York City, where Kaufman lived for three tough years, years that would change his life irrevocably. He became a part of the MacDougal Street folk music scene as a poet and also a songwriter. Green, Green Rocky Road was transcribed from Kaufman by folk singer Len Chandler and recorded by several singers and groups. The most popular version is by Peter, Paul and Mary, and now the second part of Bob Kaufman, Poet. He was one of them. He was a loner and he was a very funny

man. He was a very funny man. There wasn't a day that we didn't rather imbibe a bit more than one should. For Kaufman, Jazz seems to have been a force against the terrible was a force against the destructive. He he had some feeling that jazz almost shared a mystical light that enabled one to to deal with experiencers, his poetic pantheon prominently features Hart Crane, Coleridge, Rambow Poe and Lorca, all of whom represent some form of physical destruction or self-destruction in the name of an all encompassing, implacably demanding, poetic vision. Bob Kaufman, a poet, is a two hour documentary and one hour segments that explores Bob Kaufman's life as a man and a poet, fellow poets,

friends, lovers and scholars combined with actors and musicians. To give us a unique look at one of America's most powerful yet unsung poets. Around 1960, Raymond Ford, an editor and publisher, Hoffman had gotten so difficult as a result of a particular police officer by the name of Big Irini. But this particular police officer had it in for Bob. He did not like the fact that Bob was nonconformist, that he was living with a white woman, that he was reading poetry on the streets. He simply had it in for Kaufman and he was on his case so much. And Bob was spending so much time in jail, being beaten by the police, that finally he decided to just get out of there and do a speech is a very small community in many ways. And Bob pretty much had to get out of the scene for a while. Allen Ginsberg, poet. And it was part of a larger scale move to exploit the literary notoriety of North Beach Drive out of the

literary people in the Poets Install. The topless tourist site shows he was up for the Guinness Poetry Prize and was asked to read his work at Harvard University. They sent him a plane ticket. We went on to New York and lived in the village. Eileen Kaufman, widow of Bob Kaufman, off and on for about three years, and Millington. Bob was supposed to read at Harvard today, but at the end of the year, he was not in any condition that he was speaking because he was drinking and he didn't want to drink. So he started with speed and that didn't care. His drinking didn't. I mean, it was much worse because it was a psychological addiction as well as physical. So he couldn't read at Harvard, but he had a lot of readings in John Mitchell's little cafe gap,

like you used to read at several village places, but mainly because of John Mitchell's clubs, that blacks put together comments and gaffes like the cat knocked on the door and opened the door. And there's a black guest in there with a chick who had a little baby and said, yes, Ted Jones won't believe you can get onto the stage your can. I said, No, no, that's what you name. My name is Bob and Bob. Please don't tell me. I said no. And yesterday he told me that you've seen someone over. He's a bobcat. I thought you were, Wayne. That's really nice to see the name and the cat's name because, you know, I thought, you know, about Captain

Allen Ginsberg. You know, all the cats with the Jewish name finished the same thing. So that was my that was the first time I seen a cat I had moved to St. Joe Overstreet, Painter, 29, is Fifth Street that moved there. And I was walking down Fifth Street for these round between First and Second Avenue. There's the co-op buildings there, those tall buildings there. At the time, there was tenement buildings, sort of like what's outside here now. And they were abandoned and they were being torn down. It was like January and February. It was real cold and it was snow on the ground. And I was I'd love to see the street borrows about three or four o'clock in the morning. And I was walking across First Avenue and I passed this building and I heard a whimper.

At first I thought maybe it was an animal. Then I. I heard it again. It was like a faint cry. I knew it was. And then I went and walked down. You know, these buildings, they have these basements that you can enter from the street, from the sidewalk, lower ground level. I walk down. I looked back. There was a candlelight back there and I could see this small ball around this baby, but I could see the baby's face. That was Parker. And Bob had moved into this abandoned building with my parka and all we had was a blanket or something around the baby was obviously very cold, but it was freezing. It was well, he had enough covers. So I picked the baby up and I got Bob up and I took the baby to my house. I said, OK, just wait a week until Eileen returns from San Francisco. And Eileen came back with money.

They got a place on 2nd Street. Allen Ginsberg, I think, had an apartment. I had an apartment, 170 Second Street. We got an apartment upstairs. And so he's my neighbor for about a year, I think. And Herbert Humphrey also in the apartment upstairs for a while. And we were visited one great day by Timothy Leary. This is 1960 ish. And Leary had been experimenting with psilocybin at Harvard and the Center for the Study of Human Personality or something. And so he had arranged to come in and visit New York and stay at my apartment for a day. And Kerouac came in and Bob Kaufman also from downstairs. Jack and Bob took this over together. That was the time that Kerouac said walking looked out the window. I said walking on water wasn't built in a day in appreciation of the

strange advance in chemistry. Bob was sitting on the bed and he was very high on the psilocybin and it may had been his first time, but I'm not sure for a psychedelic. I wasn't I hadn't taken anything. I was sort of like the stabilizer in my apartment. He was trembling. But I don't know if it was if it was a fear but fear or trouble or cosmic apprehension. And he wanted some kind of reassurance, but it was historical, cosmic reassurance. What was going to happen to Earth, which was on our minds, all of us, when we got and feeling that we were somewhat responsible for directing the course of human destiny or that having had the experience of a large mind, we should at least, you know, say a word or put a spirit into things.

Ginsburg for Alan. Ginsberg won't stop tossing lions to the martyrs. This ends the campaign by left wing cardinals to elect an Eskimo pope. The church is becoming alarmed by the number of people defecting to guard. The holy intelligence agency is puzzled. They have proof he is broke and his agents use spiritual brainwashing. In addition to promises of quick sainthood,

the holy stepfather cautioned the faithful to emulate none of the saints who hide behind the Fifth Commandment when persecuted. There's also a move to cut off Ginzberg supply of lions. The poet continues to smoke carnal knowledge knowingly. I am sure the government can prove that he has stolen property. I have proof that he was Gertrude Stein medicine chest. I am not not and a secret wick. I do nothing like myself. Burn out and pass through that black hole of Calcutta. Behind my eyes he was wearing rings and hoops of longitude and latitude. He must have been hurt by real love and false love to he can cling and fall and clasp eyes with the best design, exciting families with no people in them

stuffed with bleeding expressions of human form. Why I love him, though, is Equatoria sound. I love him because his eyes lit up after a couple of years in New York. Eileen, who was here with Parker and Bob Parker, was, I don't know, five or six at the time. She finally had had enough, had found a ride back to San Francisco, had arranged for her and Parker and Bob to to drive back that afternoon. And Bob was on his way to meet them to catch this ride back to North Beach. And he was walking through Washington Square Park and police and then arrested him for walking on the grass. And he was sent to the tombs first. Then he was sent to Rikers Island. Then he was sent to Bellevue Hospital, where he was termed a behavioral problem and he was given involuntary shock treatment somewhere. The authorities shaved his head and his head shaving was traumatic to him. The first time that I met that I interacted with him,

I had just had my own head shaved. It was in that right at that period. I met him in Washington Square. His hand motions, which were erratic, seemed to be writing in his silence. He seemed to be writing. He was at that time not articulate. I mean, who is he? He mumbled a great deal. But then his hand motions seemed to be intended to communicate to the cosmos. It wasn't as though he was communicating to an individual. That friend I never known looking down on Rocky Road. Inside after upside down. Red, green, rocky road.

Tell me what you see. Come out in big red light, green light, and I'll be red meat on Rocky Road. Tell me what you see. On this journey home, hope that's going to take you for Kaufman return to San Francisco, a different man, Buddhism became the religion that helped him through this difficult period of his life. He took the death by assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Personally, this occurrence, coupled with his recent New York City experiences, devastated Kaufman. It was the next for Eileen Kaufman, widow of Bob Kaufman. Something in November. And Lawrence and Alan and I found out where

he was Trochu and Wolstenholme airfare to get back here in a hurry. So he came in about a week before Kennedy was shot. But we were having what was so beautiful, and he was he was so great. You know, we were having such a good time. And we've always had kind of a partnership, you know, who wrote poetry. And I was just whatever I had to be like music, art. But I always managed to to try to get it published. And we were looking over all the forms before the Kennedy thing. And then he saw it on television and he just went before. But after that happened and he he didn't speak as often anyone concerned because he might say I or he might bring a cigaret or something like that, that he never really started to really, you know, use of it until he had the engine room at the television world that has come into existence of

world that existed secretly and meanwhile humorous, not just on television, will not be laughable, but perplexed by Jonathan Blank TV screen. At this time, the nations of Europe and Asia just stopped the captain from the graveyard they have become. But today the rain fell from the sky and will be like the rain that fell on the debris and looking down to be red rain, like the rain that fell when George Washington abolished monarchy. It'll be boomerang like the rain that fell when John Fitzgerald Kennedy died. It shall be like the rain that fell in John Fitzgerald Kennedy died and they will see the bleached skeletons. If they have become by then, it shall be too late for them. All the symbols shall return to the realm of the symbolic and reality become the meaning again. In the meantime, masks of life continue to cover the

landscape. Now, on the landscape of the death earth, the Luftwaffe continues to fly into Volkswagens through the asphalt skies of death. It shall be black rain like the rain that fell on the day Martin Luther King died. It shall be the ancient rain that fell on the day Franklin Delano Roosevelt died. It shall be the ancient rain that fell when Nathan Hale died. It shall be the brown rain that fell on the day Crispus Attucks died. It shall be the ancient rain that fell on July 4th, 1776, when America became alive. In America, the ancient reign 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 reign is supreme and is aware of all things

that have ever happened. The ancient reign shall be brilliant yellow as it was in the day Custer died. The ancient reign is the source of all things. The ancient reign knows all secrets. The ancient reign illuminates America. The ancient reign shall kill genocide. By the time his first full collection of poetry, Solitudes Crowded With Loneliness, was published in 1965, Kaufman had all but renounced participation in the business of poetry. Had it not been for his wife, Eileen, the collection may not have appeared. Golden Sardine was published by City Lights books in 1967, number 21, in its Pocket Poets series edited by Mary Beech from a bundle of tattered pages and scraps of brown wrapping paper found in his Moroccan

leather portfolio. By the time gold sardine, sardinia, depressed solitudes, crowded with loneliness that come out in France in translation. When he arrived back, he was really a changed person, Raymond, for his view of life, who was much more grim. There was a great deal more despair in his life. And at this point, the Kennedy assassination took place November of 63. Bob had actually met President Kennedy in San Francisco on a campaign swing, and he loved him a great deal. He felt that there was real hope with someone like Kennedy in the White House. And when Kennedy was shot, he made a statement to a friend to the effect that when a president gets killed, things have gone too far. And that assassination prompted a number of horrific visions. And he felt that the only appropriate response at that point was to take a Buddhist vow of silence, which is what he did.

He ceased to speak and write. Bob always considered himself a Buddhist. He he said this quite a few times, that he was a Buddhist, that that was his that was his religious faith. I think that in Bob's mind, he very clearly had an equation between the priesthood and being a poet. He felt that it was a calling to a higher order. It involved a vow of poverty. It involved a devotion to non materialist values. And it really meant putting yourself at the service of a higher power, be it inspiration or the Holy Spirit. And moreover, he believed that these aspects of divinity were present at all times and that they were accessible to all of us. But he, as a poet, was there to channel these to these forces. Bob was right next door to me and I didn't know he was there. And he was like in seclusion. He was in his Buddhist seclusion ashram period where he didn't go out.

And I was sounds tattoo. Bob Murphy haggling with the landlord one day. And downstairs comes Bob in this red, smelly bathrobe like short bathrobe with no pants on, no shoes and socks. And he's coming down the stairs and I see him. I snuck over behind the he's going for Calcagno. I go behind the Coke machine and he put it a couple of quarters in the kind of coke popped out. And I said, hey, shit, man, that's tough. OK, let's go grab a burger. And he looked every American man living right next door to him for a year. I didn't even know how the room sounded like rain coming down. It just all always it sounded like rain. It was a fan or something. And I think that's where you got that idea for ancient rain because it was just there. That's what it was. When I be in Bob's and we never talked to each other, I'd sit on the bed and he'd sit on the BP land back, on the bed, on the pillow, his hands behind his head. And we never saw anything, but we communicated

like in silence. And there was an old blast occurred. And just like a wall right there, you couldn't see anything. And every once in a while, the wind would blow. This plastic curtain is blue classic and it's all torn. And the room was a shambles anyway. And that was the form of like, OK, we know we're here. You know, we know that there is something, you know, it's it's here between us. You know, we didn't have to talk. He didn't just jam completely shut off, you know, because, I mean, he could have done that. He could have remained silent for the rest of his life. A place called Lone. The October country, an unimaginably landscape that exists in a real unreal world. Arterial lavas, streets clicking, the sound of loudly walked bruises, thick string on beings pouring themselves

into each other, killing themselves with each other's emptiness, shouting silences across the screaming rooms, visually broken, unrecorded stitching illusionary arms as the great marble feathered stone birds crack the solid air flying from the drum of rock eternal. Love this song. I know the place in between between behind behind in front of. Below, below, above, above, inside, inside, outside, outside, coast to coast, far from far, much farther than far, much closer than close.

Another side of another side, it lies out on the far side of music, that dark blue flame of light on the other side. And it goes on going on beyond beyond Bekins at the bitter end. I know Stanis, I know lost. Move out, all right. I just saw him floating around and never talked to me speaks, you know. And so when the guy talks, you can figure he is sitting on. Even if he's faking, you can figure the fake, you know, some of his challenges, then you can really get him, you know, I mean, when a guy doesn't talk, you don't know who he is,

you see. And and then I'd hear about. He's a great poet, you say. And then suddenly this mysterious creature would be floating down the street. And I didn't know who he was. And he was a genius. See, I knew he was a genius. And he seemed like almost a cliche image in the sense. I mean. I mean because I mean, in the deep romantic sense of Rambo and Baudelaire. Kaufman's commitment to an oral immediacy over graphic, logical mediation indicates that his poetics intimately connects physical being and presence. Moreover, the inclusion of political matters such as Crispus Attucks and Carol Chessman and of course, Llorca in his roster of heroes, demonstrates a conviction that physical sacrifice is necessary and noble to achieve political as well as esthetic fulfillment. That in fact, the two are indivisible are night is ending. One second is value enough. We are forever such an Lasserre book for one as tinfoil foil Superman Fiddlesticks.

While they watch I got mine on a one cent sale. I was. McKibbon was tried to face court freak and twisted skin and sandals covered with anger, dust, anthills of lawn women hanging in my hair and lips. Let me embarrass me, expose myself and myself to go for the soft blow hard, not hard enough while they watch dance bartenders with God heads and legal bodies not seeing us in bubble gum wrappers and the hands of future Munster's future. That's the thing. Future men with great penises seducing future women with vaginas in their armpits, future children with love in their eyes between their toes. Weiping crazy. Follow the ask on their future skulls. And I think, well, that too is a thing. Future session gildenhorn before one is by U.S. John. Pornography dipped and emptied of thing depth, depth and problems. The black child and themselves conceived. Madness gripped and contemporary multiplied generations played music musical electric

cars dipped in jazz. The Kansas City maniac from World Trade Center left. Good old Fourth of July. American heroin for Mario Picasso. Mercury. The opening collages featured Simon Alexander, poet, Professor Charles Nilo, Professor Maria Dayman, Bob Kaufman, reading from 2nd April. Ruby Dee, actress, All Hallows, jack o' lantern, weather north of time.