Yes, there will be a Zoom poetry reading and discussion this Saturday. Click on the underlined link below at the appointed time to join the reading.
Poetry Reading & Discussion Sat. March 15 2:00 PM PDT
To Join by Telephone: (669) 444-9171
Meeting ID: 896 7496 5801
Passcode: 194394
This week, I will be in Reno for a book party and reading with Richard Baldo at Radical Cat books on Virginia St. on Saturday from 6:00-7:00 PM. Come out if you’re there. But I am passing thru North Beach on the way. This has me re-reading great work by Bob Kaufman, an under-appreciated icon of modern poetry. Kind people of this North Beach community patiently taught and helped me understand poetry. I literally read the covers off at least two copies of his book Solitudes Crowded With Loneliness (1965, New Directions). Everyone should own a copy. The Collected Poems of Bob Kaufman is he best one to get now— it won a National Book Award in 2020.
That’s quite a feat as Kaufman died in 1986, but his work inspired generations of poets from the 1950s on. He is perhaps better known in Europe, where he’s sometimes called the Black American Rimbaud. He is a key progenitor of smart existential humor, maybe the singular best Beat poet, and of African American writing, surrealist poetry, psychiatric rights, Buddhism, bisexuality, cafe poetry, street life, and even a civil rights icon in ways that resonate today with BLM. He was treated so very harshly by the culture—kicked out of unions literally while being investigated by the FBI for communism, repeatedly beaten and arrested (59 times), jailed and forced electroshock, and even after that, passed over as a poet. There is no better life that shows how painful and difficult the life path of poetry can be.
Yet his poetry unites surrealism with jazz-style composition in ways that still inspire readers and poets. Kaufman’s poems are filled with humor, a narrative voice, wild and fun imagery, and satirical political perspectives peppered in among vast human truths. Yet he too rarely wrote his poetry down, relying on friends and family to save and collect it after he stood on tables at readings declaiming. The poetry is full of impossible contradictions within tasty bites. Here are a few of my favorites from that book with the clear brilliant title, Solitudes Crowded With Loneliness.
I Have Folded My Sorrows I have folded my sorrows into the mantle of summer night, Assigning each brief storm its allotted space in time, Quietly pursuing catastrophic histories buried in my eyes. And yes, the world is not some unplayed Cosmic Game, And the sun is still ninety-three million miles from me, And in the imaginary forest, the shingled hippo becomes the gray unicorn. No, my traffic is not with addled keepers of yesterday’s disasters, Seekers of manifest disembowelment on shafts of yesterday’s pains. Blues come dressed like introspective echoes of a journey. And yes, I have searched the rooms of the moon on cold summer nights. And yes, I have refought those unfinished encounters. Still, they remain unfinished. And yes, I have at times wished myself something different. The tragedies are sung nightly at the funerals of the poet; The revisited soul is wrapped in the aura of familiarity. ~ Benediction Pale brown Moses went down to Egypt land To let somebody’s people go. Keep him out of Florida, no UN there: The poor governor is all alone, With six hundred thousand illiterates. American, I forgive you…I forgive you Nailing black Jesus to an imported cross Every six weeks in Dawson, Georgia. America, I forgive you…I forgive you Eating black children, I know your hunger America, I forgive you…I forgive you Burning Japanese babies defensively— I realize how necessary it was. Your ancestor had beautiful thoughts in his brain. His descendants are experts in real estate. Your generals have mushrooming visions. Every day your people get more and more Cars, televisions, sickness, death dreams, You must have been great Alive. ~ Cincophrenicpoet A cincoprhenic poet called a meeting of all five of him at which four of the most powerful of him voted to expel the weakest of him who didn’t dig it, coughing poetry or revenge, beseech- ing all horizontal reserves to cross, spiral and whirl. ~ I include the following poem because it gives a sense of the intelligence and humor Kaufman wrote with, both here and in other classic longer work, such as the unique Abomunist Manifesto. Ginsberg (for Allen) Ginsberg won't stop tossing lions to the martyrs. This ends the campaign by leftwing cardinals to elect an Eskimo Pope. The Church is becoming alarmed by the number of people defecting to God. The Holy Intelligence Agency is puzzled: they have proof he is broker 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 hidebehind the Fifth Commandment when persecuted There is also a move to cut off Ginsberg's supply of lions. The poet continues to smoke carnal knowledge knowingly. I am sure the government can't prove he is stolen property; I have proof that he was Gertrude Stein's medicine chest. I am not an I, secret wick. I do nothing, light myself, burn. Allen passed 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, too. 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 equatorially sound: I love him became his eyes leak. ~
This poem below has become iconic for Bob Kaufman and the depiction of the many sad lives of modern poets Would You Wear My Eyes? My body is a torn mattress, Disheveled throbbing place For the comings and goings Of loveless transients. The whole of me Is an unfurnished room Filled with dank breath Escaping in gasps to nowhere. Before completely objective mirrors I have shot myself with my eyes, But death refused my adavances. I have walked on my walls each night Through strange landscapes in my head. I have brushed my teeth with orange peel, Iced with cold blood from the dripping faucets. My face is covered with maps of 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. The nipples of my breasts are sun-browned cockleburrs; Long-forgotten Indian tribes fight battles on my chest Unaware of the sunken ships rotting in my stomach. My legs are charred remains of burned cypress trees; My feet are covered with moss from bayous, flowing across my floor. I can’t go out anymore. I shall sit on my ceiling. Would you wear my eyes? ~
For me, a great vivid line or two from these poems was frequently enough to send me inspired in a new direction, writing. Find a favorite, and go your own direction with it. Don’t worry about sense and narrative, just keep true to the feel of it. Make it big instead of focused. Let it encompass as much as it can. Bring the poem to the reading. Or just bring whatever you’re reading or writing.
Hope to see you at Poetry!
Our weekly workshop events are often sponsored by Nevada Humanities and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Our in-person workshops are supported by Clark County at Winchester Dondero Cultural Center. Thank you!Bruce Isaacson
Poetry Promise, Inc.
a 501 (c)(3) Corporation
Phone: (702) 205-7100
Bruce@PoetryPromise.org