I Still Don't Sleep At Night

I am on my way to the library. My conscience is starting to bother me. Other people might be waiting for my overdue books. But I am glad I kept The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry as long as I did because I found a poet who speaks to me. I have always been interested in the Beat Generation anyhow. Now I have to hunt up everything he wrote, and I can't wait. I was just skimming along, reading a poem here, a poem there, when I suddenly read a poem in 3-D. This thing reached out and grabbed me by the soul and shook me. I almost fell over. I said, "Whoa, what's this?" I could not believe that I never had heard of the poet, Bob Kaufman, but after reading his poems I went and read some brief bio stuff and found out why. But first let me share a poem or two. I really like the Jail Poems, but I don't have a scanner and they are too long to copy by hand. Here's a good one:

I, Too, Know What I Am Not

No, I am not death wishes of sacred rapists, singing
on candy gallows.
No, I am not spoor of Creole murderers hiding
in crepe-paper bayous.
No, I am not yells of some asssassinated inventor, locked
in his burning machine.
No, I am not forced breathing of Cairo's senile burglar,
in lead shoes.
No, I am not Indian-summer fruit of Negro piano tuners,
with muslin gloves.
No, I am not noise of two-gun senators, in hallowed
peppermint hall.
No, I am not pipe-smoke hopes of cynical chiropractors,
traffickers in illegal bone.
No, I am not pitchblende curse of Indian suicides,
in bonnets of flaming water.
No, I am not soap-power sighs of impotent window washers,
in pants of air.
No, I am not kisses of tubercular sun addicts, smiling
through rayon lips.
No, I am not chipped philosopher's tattered ideas sunk
in his granite brain.
No, I am not cry of amethyst heron, winged stone in flight
from cambric bullets.
No, I am not sting of the neurotic bee, frustrated
in cheesecloth gardens.
No, I am not peal of muted bell, clapperless
in the faded glory.
No, I am not report of silenced guns, helpless
in the pacifist hands.
No, I am not call of wounded hunter, alone
in the forest of bone.
No, I am not eyes of the infant owls hatching
the roofless night.
No, I am not the whistle of Havana whores with cribs
of Cuban death.
No, I am not shriek of Bantu children, bent
Under pennywhistle whips.
No, I am not whisper of the African trees,
leafy Congo telephones.
No, I am not Leadbelly of blues, escaped from guitar jails.
No, I am not anything that is anything I am not.


Now, that's some far-out beatnik poetry. I am snapping my fingers, drinking three glasses of red wine, two cups of espresso, and smoking five unfiltered cigarettes. Where's my bongos? You know how blogger always has the Edit-Me thing in the corner of its blogs? And people write things like "100 things about me"? For an evil minute I thought, wow, wouldn't I like to just put this poem in the Edit-Me section and pretend I wrote it. But if I learned one thing as an English major, it's that plagerism is a mortal sin, and you are branded with a scarlet letter P on your visage for life. (Too bad they don't teach those kind of ethics in journalism classes, eh?) Anyway, if I'd have done it, can you imagine? Talk about being something you're not! The next paragraph is all info I got from the book but not word for word, by the way.

Bob Kaufman was a street poet, and the book says a "people's poet and a poet's poet." He was a jazz poet, a Beat poet, a New Orleans poet and a San Francisco poet. He was one of the early living examples of the Beat generation but he was overshadowed in reputation by white and formally educated contemporaries like Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Gary Snyder and William Burroughs. Kaufman was half African-American, half Jewish.

Anyhow, his books are Solitudes Crowded with Loneliness (1965), The Ancient Rain: Poems 1956-1978, and the Golden Sardine. I am sure I won't return any of them on time either.