Scan barcode
kmallon's review
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
inspiring
lighthearted
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
5.0
robertlashley's review
5.0
And now there is only the work. There are no cops to put him in jail nor scenes to gawk at him. There are no gifted, troubled poets who he loved more than they loved co-opting his aesthetic without giving him credit. There are no pop poetry scholars uncomfortable with his look, lack of machismo, or lack of political talking points. There are only his words here, paced in the syllables in which he made so much radical, beautiful music. And the outgone neon library of images and metaphors in his mind that can make these poems seem new to read right now. And a gift for transposing the rhetoric of black music and the black church on the page unparalleled by any poet I have ever read in my life.
I don’t know if The Collected Poems of Bob Kaufman can do for its author what a generation of revivals did for Tennessee Williams plays (i.e., change the conversation around him from his tortured outsider persona to his rare in a century literary talent). Reading this collection, however, makes me believe that it’s something that direly needs to happen.
I don’t know if The Collected Poems of Bob Kaufman can do for its author what a generation of revivals did for Tennessee Williams plays (i.e., change the conversation around him from his tortured outsider persona to his rare in a century literary talent). Reading this collection, however, makes me believe that it’s something that direly needs to happen.
sarinasity's review
I don’t think I like beat poetry. I’ve never read any until now. To be fair, I did like a handful of Kaufman’s work, but reading a lot of it felt nonsensical as if I were reading a conversation filled with inside jokes between Kaufman and himself only. Idk. Couldn’t stand it after a while.
harleyclaes's review
5.0
Bob Kaufman is officially one of my favorite poets, next to Lenore Kandel and of course Ginsberg. He is a poet-genius, “masking the absence of a person, the world caught in pockets of thoughts that feed on believing” as he wrote himself. He also wrote “Creation is master and man does not exist except as tools of art” His affiliates said he was a living breathing poem.
It was hard choosing excerpts for this one, I was highlighting every other passage in this book- so inspired that I was writing my own poems in the margins the whole time. This is quite literally a mystical text I will continue to reference for eternity because of how inspiring it is.
“My mirror died, & I can’t tell if I still reflect”
“Who crouches there in my Heart? Some wounded bird, hidden in the tall grass that surrounds my heart.”
“Destroyed angels and ancient dreams of old embryonic wonder, dreams of glory on rounded fields of strange bellies with sandpaper skins bruising tender hands, holding other lives cherished from memory of yesterday”
Both metaphysical & reflective, gorged on reality & dreams- he is wholly beatnik and very versatile. This is a must read essential of the Beat gen.
It was hard choosing excerpts for this one, I was highlighting every other passage in this book- so inspired that I was writing my own poems in the margins the whole time. This is quite literally a mystical text I will continue to reference for eternity because of how inspiring it is.
“My mirror died, & I can’t tell if I still reflect”
“Who crouches there in my Heart? Some wounded bird, hidden in the tall grass that surrounds my heart.”
“Destroyed angels and ancient dreams of old embryonic wonder, dreams of glory on rounded fields of strange bellies with sandpaper skins bruising tender hands, holding other lives cherished from memory of yesterday”
Both metaphysical & reflective, gorged on reality & dreams- he is wholly beatnik and very versatile. This is a must read essential of the Beat gen.
More...