Bob Kaufman Books

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!!

jazz, surrealism, and absurdism, all clash together in this splendid volume of work. kaufman was a contemporary of jack kerouac,allen ginsberg, leroi jones, and other beat luminaries of the 50's and 60's. he is credited with coining the term, "beat" and was the unofficial poet laureate of san francisco's north beach area.reclusive and mysterious, he spent many of his readings, reciting his poems from memory; very few volumes of his poems were in print;there were only three known books of his work: " The Ancient Rain," " Solitudes Crowded with Loneliness" and " Golden Sardine." his poetic influences are many, such as rimbaud and hart crane, but jazz is always at the heart of his work...to capture the essence of this brilliant poet, check out such pieces as " would you wear my eyes?" " i, too, know what i am not," and " walking parker home"

Of all the Beat poets, Bob Kauffman was the most naturally gifted. One gets the feeling that Kauffman dashed most of these poems off by cafe or bar light, and that's a big part of their power and their charm. These poems are not "finished" in the same sense as the standard, tenured faculty M.F.A. drivel that's defined as POETRY these ticky-tacky days. Rather, they are invitations: doorways into another time, place, and state of mind, and they're as pumped full of virtu (effortless grace) as a bop solo on the far side of midnight.

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

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

Jeff Wayne's Raconteur is a very funny and highly engaging collection of original stories about some of the twenty four performers of stage and screen. From Frank Sinatra, Jerry Lewis, Bob Hope, and Marlon Brando, to Dean Martin, Errol Flynn, Gary Cooper, and Elvis Presley, here are anecdotal tales that will fascinate, inform and thoroughly entertain the listener. Highly recommended for both personal and community library audiobook collections, Raconteur is also available in a CD format (07-3, ....

This two CD, two hour collection of highly entertainting show business stories and anecdotes by Jeff Wayne includes such luminaries as Elivs Presley, Frank Sinatra, Jerry Lewis, Bob Hope, Biong Crosby, The Beatles, Bela Lugosi, Andy Kaufman, Jay Leno, Pavoroti, Gary Cooper, and a host of other entertainment celebrities. Jeff's comedic stand-up timing is enhanced with a natural storytelling ability told with genuine wit and a little wisdom!

The title of my review says it all--this is an essential collection for anyone serious about sound art/theory/poetry or avant-garde music. The CD is a very nice bonus, full of unbelievable rarities as well.

By focusing on "earplay" in texts by James Joyce, Ezra Pound, and other modern writers, this collection's twelve essays investigates the relationship between acoustical technologies and 20th-century experimental poetics. The accompanying CD offers soundtracks of early radio sounds, poetry readings, Dada cabaret performances, jazzoetry, audio-poems and contemporary Caribbean DJ dub poetry.

I bought this book at Borders last year and attended a reading/signing with Michael Madsen. It's great on the page, but it's even better on stage!!! When Madsen reads his poetry in his trademark raspy voice, he just grabs you by the ears and leaves listeners hanging on his every word (this book is also availble on Spoken Word CD--BUY IT!). If you ever get a chance check him out at a local signing... it's worth the trip! "A Blessing of the Hounds" yields some great poetry, intimate photos and a rare glimpse into a complex entertainment personality. I especially liked "Sinatraless" and "Virginia." Madsen's poetry is existential at times, humorous at other times-- he gets you thinking. He's a rebel like Rimbaud.

Mr. Blonde is not such a bad guy afterall... or is he? READ THE BOOK!

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 those of Cherk's works this reviewer has studied. Cherkovski, biographer of giants Ferlinghetti, Winans, and Bukowski, this time sets aside the journalistic and laborious near drudgeries of biographer toil, instead transcending 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 new work; nothing hacklike; nothing testy nor negative nor put down-y.Kaufman was really a close friend and is so sorely missed by Cherkovski a reader will have a tough time keeping eyes dry. One must wonder about the amount of affection he felt for his former roommate, charles bukowski, in comparison to the genuine love, admiration, deep abiding respect both creatively and as a simple pal for a pal, and now sorrow for his departed walk-mate an laugh partner, for so many fun filled moments of joy, laughs, hilarious revelries and ribald north beach shared experiences...Buy this great book for your library, for those shelves you maintain the very best of cogent spiritual works packed with holy sacred precious elegaic renderings of our master surviving poet/scribes - if this one doesn't grab at least a Nobel nomination for poetry - I'll astro- project to stockholm myself to beat on their ignorant and yes illiterate doors! Cherkovski has dominated Bay area literary activity for twenty years, mentoring his near peers gregory corso, michael McClure, and especially star student harold "hotel nirvana" norse, to new heights of literary success - without Cherkovski's calm and enlightened hand, such writers would have struggled so much more to bring lucid cohesion to their new stanzas.This elegy will last if we last; a work to bring walls of bigotry down as long as hate sticks around - FOR AS LONG AS THERE REMAINS ONE GOOD EAR ON EARTH THIS ELEGY WILL BE HEARD AND LIVE FOREVER. Amen

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

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.

The style of this book is excellent in that it gives you plenty of examples of how fuzzy arithmetic works. Honestly, I doubt there exists a more comprehensive book on fuzzy arithmetic around.
You'll find information on fuzzy numbers and their basic arithmetic, how alpha cuts work in fuzzy arithemtic, type-two fuzzy numbers, probabilisitic-fuzzy hybrid numbers, fuzzy modular arithmetic, combinatorics with fuzzy numbers, and an application of fuzzy arithmetic to catastrophe theory. And more, of course.
If you can find a copy, get it immediately. The explanations are clear, the reasoning is thorough, and the examples carefully illustrate the ideas. Steal this book!

I've had this book for years, and keep coming back to it. Many books define fuzzy numbers in various ways, and hint at combining them with some kind of arithmetic. Kaufmann and Gupta actually carry out those operations. Since fuzzy addition is a kind of convolution, they also show why fuzzy subtraction does not reverse the operation - deconvolution does. If you want to use fuzzy arithmetic for constraint propagation, this changes the basic nature of backwards propagation.

I just wish the author's clarity had extended a little farther into the mechanics of the various kinds of convolution. They handle discrete cases only, and offer about the least readable presentation of convolution that I've ever seen.

I'm not a theoretician, so I appreciate the book's clarity and examples. It is so clear and thorough that I refer to it for ideas quite unrelated to fuzzy arithmetic. If a sign of a great book is the number of unrelated topics that it clarifies, then this title is very good indeed.

This title may not suit the beginner and may not suit the expert. For us in the middle, though, it is incredibly helpful.

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.

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.