The Poetry of Bob Kaufman

Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 2005 When I Die, I Won't Stay Dead: The oP etry of Bob Kaufman Mona Lisa Saloy Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Saloy, Mona Lisa, "When I Die, I Won't Stay Dead: The oeP try of Bob Kaufman" (2005). LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 3400. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/3400 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please [email protected]. WHEN I DIE, I WON’T STAY DEAD: THE POETRY OF BOB KAUFMAN A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of English by Mona Lisa Saloy B.A., University of Washington, 1979 M.A., San Francisco State University, 1981 M.F.A, Louisiana State University, 1988 August, 2005 ©Copyright 2005 Mona Lisa Saloy All rights reserves ii For my sister Barbara Ann, who encouraged my educational pursuits, and for Donald Kaufman, who though dying, helped me to know his brother. iii Acknowledgments I must thank the members of my Dissertation committee who allowed my passion to find the real Kaufman to grow, encouraged me through personal trials, and brought to my work their love of African American culture and literature as well as their trust in my pursuit. I am extremely grateful to my dissertation director, Dr. John Lowe, for his excellent guidance, encouragement, and inspiration. His patience with me and insight into African American literature and scholastic research always advised me in the right directions for writing and presenting scholarship and encouraged me gracefully to completion. Dr. Rosan Jordan taught me Folklore; and it was through this association that I came to know Dr. Frank de Caro and to work with him. I thank Poet and writer Rodger Kamenetz who guided my development as a poet during my M.F.A., encouraged my study of Kaufman, and provided valuable insight throughout my journey. Thanks to Dr. F. Nels Anderson, in Drama, who was the Graduate School representative and who supported this project since my first examination. I give thanks to Dr. Joyce Marie iv Jackson, who trained me in Folklore fieldwork, pushed me to collect and present findings, with whom I share a profound appreciation for African and African American folkways. I thank Dr. Reggie Young, a poet and fiction writer whose work I admire and respect, with whom I share a deep-seated love for African American poetics. I extend gratitude to Dr. Daniel Fogel, a poet and scholar, now President of the University of Vermont, who aided my early transformation from poet to scholar. Thanks also to Maria Damon and Alden Nielsen who encouraged my pursuit of Kaufman and his work early in this project, provided encouragement. Special thanks to Maria Damon who shared some of her research on Kaufman, whose early urging to represent the issues of Black Beats at the New York University Conference resulted in my chapter and participation in the Whitney Museum of American Arts’s book and exhibit on the Beats. Gracious thanks to Louisiana State University and Dillard University for their support in seeking funding from the following sources: the National Endowment for the Humanities Dissertation Fellowship; the United Negro College Fund/Andrew W. Mellon Dissertation Fellowship and travel support to University of California, Berkeley to review the City Lights Papers, and to Stanford University’s Special Collection; and special thanks for Dillard University Faculty Research/Travel Funds to Boston University’s Special Collections. A host of Librarians and professionals came to my aid, most notably Jacqueline Landry Jones, formerly of LSU’s Middleton Library, now at Baton Rouge Community College; Mr. Lester Sullivan, Archivist at Xavier University; Professor Michel Fabre at The Sorbonne in Paris; Mrs. Annie Payton and Mr. Charles Dunn of Dillard University; v Rudolph Lewis, former Reference Librarian at Pratt in Baltimore; Herbert Jones of Pratt; Mr. Benny Jefferson, retired Archivist of the New Orleans Recreation Department (NORD); Mr. John Kelly, Archivist, Special Collections at University of New Orleans; Mrs. Patricia Adams, the principal’s office at Hardin Elementary; the librarians at Amistad Research Center of Tulane University; and Clinical Psychologist Dr. Michael Brady for helping me sift through Eidetic information. Thanks also to film-maker Billy Woodbury for sharing his research. Preface This Dissertation on Bob Kaufman came to me unexpectedly. Bob Kaufman’s poems are powerful, complex, and well-loved. Though criticism was beginning to appear when I started my project, little specific detail about the man had been revealed. During my journey of inquiry into the life and work of Robert Gernal Kaufman, many people along the way have asked how I came to this project. Here is my answer. Bob Kaufman’s work was recommended to me by a friend, now deceased, named Elluage Anthony Carson, a surrealist poet who was much in the Kaufman tradition. We met in Nelson Bentley’s writing workshop at the University of Washington; Professor Bently was the poetic father of us all, urging us to study poetic forms and the discipline coming with it, while allowing us our dearest poetic pursuits, namely breaking the rules. We were undergraduates, full of passion and a great love of all literature, but especially newly published Black literature. Elluage and I were also students and mentees of Black writer Colleen McElroy. It was under her care, and her grooming of us in the United Black Artists’ Guild that we blossomed. Colleen led us to the works and lives of writers who began like us, who looked like us, and spoke like us, whose families didn’t always understand why they needed to do this writing thing; she knew we must, and we did. vii Like Kaufman, Elluage was often thought of as a bohemian, living here and there, sometimes making it off of the kindness of friends. In his writing, Elluage was quite surreal as well, and after ethereal. To this day, I cannot remember what he did for a living; he was always writing, reading his works to anyone who would listen. When Elluage was low on cash, he sold books from his voluminous library, which is how I came to own my copy of Solitudes Crowded with Loneliness and Harold Cruse’s The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual, books, Elluage insisted, I had to read if I were to become a writer. Elluage was astonished that I didn’t know Kaufman or Cruse. How could I not know Bob Kaufman? I had to read him. No, I had to inhale him. How could I be a Black artist and not read Cruse? I must make both a part of my daily consciousness raising efforts, which Elluage urged with all sincerity, and I did. Like many Bob Kaufman aficionados, I carried Solitudes with me like a bible, reading but mostly studying, entering his head scape, at once so foreign and familiar. Cruse required more study; the Harlem Renaissance became my Holy Grail; I could never digest enough about the work of Black writers and intellectuals from the turn of the twentieth century onward. Elluage would tell me what he knew of Kaufman’s life and that sadly, he must be dead, because no one had heard from him in years. I kept Kaufman’s poems close, knowing he was a New Orleans Black poet; in fact, he was from my neighborhood. So an additional bond was formed; Bob Kaufman was my home-blood and a poet. It was not until I was part of the Black writers’ workshops at the African American Historical and Cultural Society in San Francisco that I met Bob Kaufman. We were in a round-table discussion on the Black literary tradition; Bob Kaufman, alone, appeared in the library, and quietly listened to us while looking into our eyes. At some point, we spoke of favorite writers; at another time, we read a poem representative of our work. After most people left and since Bob Kaufman didn’t speak throughout, I asked Devorah Major, then Poet in Residence and later San Francisco Poet Laureate, who was that guy? That’s Bob Kaufman, she said. Shocked, relieved he was alive, but angry I didn’t recognize him, and that I didn’t get a chance to speak to him, I resolved that the next time I would know him. That was in early 1980. Soon after that, Ancient Rain appeared, and the artistic community was buzzing with Kaufman anecdotes. While I was able to get a glimpse of him on occasion, I was not able to get close enough to speak with him. Later, in 84 and 85 after Ancient Rain celebrations toned down, and during my tenure as Poet in Residence at the African American Historical and Cultural Society, Bob Kaufman showed up at the Cultural Center on occasion to hear us younger poets read. Sometimes he came alone; sometimes he was accompanied by his companion Lynn Wildey, a poet in her own right. Bob, though obviously in fragile health, continued to participate in benefit readings. One in particular, the Poets for Peace reading hosted by Herman Berlandt, stopped when Bob arrived; everyone gave him a standing ovation.

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