This Week Take a Hike With Bob Kaufman
Bob Kaufman was born in New Orleans in 1925 to a Jewish father and a Black Catholic mother. As a child, he was exposed to a variety of beliefs and traditions, including Catholicism, Judaism, and the voodoo practices of his maternal grandmother. At thirteen years old , Kaufman ran away from home and joined the Merchant Marine, eventually circumnavigating the globe numerous times over the next two decades.
In the 1940s, Kaufman encountered the literary world of New York, where he met writers William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg. He later moved to San Francisco, joining Jack Kerouac, Gregory Corso, and others at the center of the emerging Beat scene. In 1959, Kaufman, Ginsberg, John Kelly, and William Margolis founded Beatitude, a literary magazine that provided a platform for emerging writers.
Kaufman is often credited with popularizing Beat poetry and its philosophies, particularly in Europe and France. Deeply influenced by jazz and oral traditions, he often composed poems for performance rather than writing them down. He became known for performing in coffeehouses and on San Francisco’s streets, developing a reputation as one of the Beat movement’s pivotal voices.
Kaufman also experienced periods of incarceration and legal trouble due to addiction. Following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963, he took a vow of silence. He remained silent for nearly twelve years, breaking his silence in 1975, shortly after the end of the Vietnam War, when he entered a San Francisco coffeehouse and recited All Those Ships That Never Sailed.
In 1981, Kaufman received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. He passed away in 1986.
This week, Take a Hike with Bob Kaufman.
Believe Believe