Body and Soul: Bob Kaufman's Golden Sardine

African American Review, Summer, 2000 by T. J. Anderson, III

In that Jazz corner of life

Wrapped in a mist of sound

His legacy, our Jazz-tinted dawn

Wailing his triumphs of oddly begotten dreams

Inviting the nerveless to feel once more

That fierce dying of humans consumed

In raging fires of love. (5)

There are several poems that celebrate jazz musicians like Charlie Parker, Ray Charles, Lester Young, and Coleman Hawkins. For example, "Mingus" attempts to capture the musical essence of bassist and composer Charles Mingus:

String-chewing bass players

Plucking rolled balls of sound

From the jazz-scented night.

Feeding hungry beat seekers

Finger-shaped heartbeats,

Driving ivory nails

Into their greedy eyes.

Smoke crystals, from the nostrils

Of released jazz demons,

Crash from foggy yesterday

To the light

Of imaginary night. (27)

There are also experimental poems like "Jazz Te Deum For Inhaling at Mexican Bonfires" and "Cincophrenicpoet" that abandon the conventional linear form. There are surreal poems like "Battle Report," with its opening strophe:

One Thousand saxophones infiltrate the city.

Each with a man inside,

Hidden in ordinary cases,

Labeled FRAGILE. (8)

Throughout the collection, Kaufman's numerous references to jazz music indicate its importance to his political and social vision of African American culture.

Kaufman's continual involvement with jazz had become slightly attenuated by the time New Directions published his last collection, The Ancient Rain, in 1981. The majority of the poems in this collection reveal a poet who is more engaged with apocalyptic imagery than the celebratory qualities of music. For example, this prose passage from the collection's title poem expresses the extent of Kaufman's vision:

I see the death some cannot see, because I am a poet spread-eagled on this bone of the world. A war is coming, in many forms. It shall take place. The South must hear Lincoln at Gettysburg, the South shall be forced to admit that we have endured. The black son of the American Revolution is not the son of the South. Crispus Attucks' death does not make him the Black son of the South. So be it.

Let the voice out of the whirlwind speak. (138)

Here, apparently, is the prophetic voice Kaufman would continue to use until his death.

In terms of Kaufman's use of a jazz aesthetic, Golden Sardine (1967) is perhaps his most mature work. The jazz meter which Kaufman uses here is quite similar to the meter of regular jazz music, in which the improvised solo breaks away from the composition's melodic and harmonic structure. In Kaufman's aesthetic, the improvisatory gesture is a crucial element, rendering his use of regular meter unpredictable. Golden Sardine is tour-de-force Kaufman, with the poet employing the various techniques he pioneered in his earlier books. Published as part of the City Lights Press's uniquely designed pocket book series, this volume, made to fit in the pocket of a coat or jacket, was smaller than the average trade paperback and produced to bring poetry out of homes and libraries and into the streets and cafes.

Kaufman's collection consists of poetry collected from scattered bits of manuscript found in a leather-bound valese by his friend Mary Beach after a fire in his apartment. The book's title is a portion of a phrase he had written on a brown piece of wrapping paper. Overall, the poems show Kaufman's ability successfully to manipulate a wide variety of forms, as he examines the political and social issues of his time.