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Jazz Jail and God: Impressionistic Biography of Bob Kaufman
Biography. "The poet nailed on the hard bone of this world. His soul dedicated to silence is a fish with frog's eyes. The blood of a poet flows out with his poems, back to the pyramid of bones from which he is thrust his death is a saving grace. Creation is perfect" -Bob Kaufman, 1980.
- GenresPoetry
112 pages, Paperback
First published February 1, 1987
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March 5, 2018
Four stars for the quality of writing as I cannot review this as a biography.
Mel Clay is one highly talented writer. He calls Jazz, Jail & God an 'impressionistic biography' but I would think it more appropriate to be called a directly inspired piece of prose poetry, and an elegy would be more fitting than 'biography'.
If you are looking for more information on the life of African-American beat poet, Bob Kaufman, this is not the book where you will find it. As Clay mentions himself in the introduction, such a book has yet to be written.
Bob Kaufman was an extremely talented poet; in fact, he just might be the best of the beat poets, although it is hard to say that for two reasons - 1) first of all, he did not leave behind a significant body of work (only 3 major books and 3 broadsides while he was alive and one Selected Poems published posthumously) and 2) many of his contemporaries were also great in their own ways and have gone on to build their poetry careers reaching ever and ever greater heights within their own art. Perhaps Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Michael McClure are the best examples of this. Gary Snyder and Joanne Kyger as well.
However, this book was highly stylised and very enjoyable. I remember one night not being able to go to sleep because I had nailed a power nap, to the point where I couldn't go back to sleep that night. So, I crawled out of bed and picked up my copy of Jazz, Jail & God and as I descended into the wee hours of the morning, I realised it was the perfect book to be reading as Kaufman himself would be raging at ungodly hours, his brain cooked out on speed or other substances. This book really is fantastic in that it captures something special. It captures a feeling of mental torpor and restlessness, the constant ephemerality of life, the pursuit of IT as the beats called it, and the mysteriousness of Kaufman himself, a person who remained elusive within these pages itself. In fact, it is hard to tell at which parts of the book Kaufman is actually around because the author seems to be chasing his shadow most of the time.
Like with Genesis Angels (which was about Lew Welch), this book does not even try to be a biography; instead it proposes a distorted, poetic elegy to the late great Bob Kaufman and a truly 'inspirational biographical prose poetry' piece of art which is worth reading. Some of the sentences read almost like a cut-up that I found I had to keep going back over them and reading them. What I especially loved about this author is his purposeful avoidance or possibly even 'contempt' for conventional writing which follows the standardised collocations of English. Through this book, he breathes new life into the language and shows us just some of the exciting possibilities heretofore unattained but attainable through the creative mind. Highly recommended but not for people seeking biographical information on Kaufman.
Mel Clay is one highly talented writer. He calls Jazz, Jail & God an 'impressionistic biography' but I would think it more appropriate to be called a directly inspired piece of prose poetry, and an elegy would be more fitting than 'biography'.
If you are looking for more information on the life of African-American beat poet, Bob Kaufman, this is not the book where you will find it. As Clay mentions himself in the introduction, such a book has yet to be written.
Bob Kaufman was an extremely talented poet; in fact, he just might be the best of the beat poets, although it is hard to say that for two reasons - 1) first of all, he did not leave behind a significant body of work (only 3 major books and 3 broadsides while he was alive and one Selected Poems published posthumously) and 2) many of his contemporaries were also great in their own ways and have gone on to build their poetry careers reaching ever and ever greater heights within their own art. Perhaps Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Michael McClure are the best examples of this. Gary Snyder and Joanne Kyger as well.
However, this book was highly stylised and very enjoyable. I remember one night not being able to go to sleep because I had nailed a power nap, to the point where I couldn't go back to sleep that night. So, I crawled out of bed and picked up my copy of Jazz, Jail & God and as I descended into the wee hours of the morning, I realised it was the perfect book to be reading as Kaufman himself would be raging at ungodly hours, his brain cooked out on speed or other substances. This book really is fantastic in that it captures something special. It captures a feeling of mental torpor and restlessness, the constant ephemerality of life, the pursuit of IT as the beats called it, and the mysteriousness of Kaufman himself, a person who remained elusive within these pages itself. In fact, it is hard to tell at which parts of the book Kaufman is actually around because the author seems to be chasing his shadow most of the time.
Like with Genesis Angels (which was about Lew Welch), this book does not even try to be a biography; instead it proposes a distorted, poetic elegy to the late great Bob Kaufman and a truly 'inspirational biographical prose poetry' piece of art which is worth reading. Some of the sentences read almost like a cut-up that I found I had to keep going back over them and reading them. What I especially loved about this author is his purposeful avoidance or possibly even 'contempt' for conventional writing which follows the standardised collocations of English. Through this book, he breathes new life into the language and shows us just some of the exciting possibilities heretofore unattained but attainable through the creative mind. Highly recommended but not for people seeking biographical information on Kaufman.
Displaying 1 of 1 review