May 18, 2025
Long ago, in a North Beach far further away from Invasion by Digital Technology, Bob Booker asked me to write a poem about Bob Kaufman and perform it in closing the Poet’s Stage of the North Beach Festival, June of 1998,
Bob Kaufman was an easy subject for sympathy. So brilliant—so breakthrough—a Communist organizer hounded out of New Orleans—born from Jewish father and Black mother—co-founder of Beatitutde magazine—under-recognized among the Beats except perhaps in France, where he was ‘the Black Rimbaud’—legendary real-time improviser on Jazz and Coffeehouse Stage—and victim of Arrest and Clinical Incarceration and stunning assaults on Cerebrum and Frontal Lobe through the Bestial Nonsense of Electro-Shock ‘Therapy’.
I saw him fairly often in and nearby Washington Square, two blocks from my flat at 1852 Stockton. Corners were his stopping-place. Loose yet defiant was his walk. Seeking and yet long-knowing unto the all-knowing of emptinness was his look.
Drawing from such a vital flame and lyric voice came easy. His being practically leapt into words. Glenn Spearman and I performed ‘Moving through Here’ in June at the Festival—the last time that I worked with Glenn and in fact my last time of seeing him—Gleen passed from Colon Cancer the next October after not telling even friends that he was, as wife Shantee said, “sick.”
In 2025 Bob Kaufman receives some overdue veneration. This Substack reproduced one memento of a three-day celebration in North Beach, April 16 to 18, that dear friend Nancy Yvonne sent along.
Tonight around 9:00 p.m. at the Garden District Bookstore a multi-day ‘Gonzofest’ in New Orleans, honoring Hunter Thompson. closes with reading of someone’s new poem about Bob Kaufman coincident with music from deserved legend and multi-instrumentalist David Amram, David’s son Aram, drummer Herman Lebeaux, and more.
So, I think, energies abide and throw their lights together as they ever have!
(You’ll see below that my voicing today misses some lines from the version printed in 2002’s book Flares.)
‘Moving through Here’ (for and from Bob Kaufman)
Of wires wrought, A wisping root, Like smoke and mirrors, Bob Kaufman floated and stung.
Electric cane's-head ebony, Blowing demi-semi-quavers To tilt against the Domes That heap corpses under clouds!
All of high signs! All in bold face! Yoruddish! Mondo Gumbo! Bolts a-channel through his veins! TV eyes lashed by pain!
O', Bomkauf—receiver/speaker like Hart Crane, Lorca, Diops, … — Could you be Abomunible enough, A complete witch-doctor For those whom you would touch?
How to tell the Rain around you, That Rain which wells within? No path along the Avenue, No Grove for your sung rites.
He was seized and shocked, Shocked and seized. Like Miles and Monk, he knew rests May speak of vastness.
He stated light.
Wear his eyes! Try your eyes! Fuse from sources For which we thirst!
Old Sprite, Graven and translucent, Resurrected, All time to come, For your word and music.
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