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BOOK REVIEW
WALI

Yet we all know that if there is no black tune, there is definitely a white tune which has shouted itself hoarse for the past three hundred or more years and is still booming in its deep bass and sharp treble.

Obiajunwa Wali

INSIGHT AND APPREHENSION

SOLITUDES CROWDED WITH LONELINESS. By Bob Kaufman. New Directions Publishing Corp., New York. 87 Pages. $1.60.

EMPLOYED AS a cabin-boy on a freighter at the age of thirteen, Bob Kaufman journeyed to many lands where he observed and digested the cultures of the people. It was during this period of twenty years travel that he read extensively and cultivated a flavor for world literature.

Kaufman is little known in America. His works have been widely recognized in Europe, particularly England and Belgium. In 1961, he was a leading contender for the Guinness Poetry Award in England. His Jail Poems have been translated into Italian, French and Spanish. He was one of the founders of Beatitude, the North Beach poetry magazine. Presently, he is living in San Francisco.

This assemblage of poems and writings gives evidence that Kaufman excels as a craftsman in the realm of contemporary poetry. His knowledge of verse and poetry construction is clearly indicated by his flexibility of form. His skillful command of words gives insight into the very sensitive and explosive emotions of the artist.

Solitudes Crowded With Loneliness are poems and writings which may be termed as "beatnik" literature. They reflect the poet's anguish and despair brought about by the general decline of social conditions affecting society and infecting American life. He laments the bombing of Hiroshima; the artists who are involuntarily being drowned in the sea of pollution; the persecution of Charlie Chaplin; the demise of Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker, Max Bodenheim and a spectrum of themes unveiling the writer's stream of consciousness. As these lines are read, the poet's feeling of despondency and uncertainty as to the future of mankind saturates the mind. However, Kaufman states there is a promise of fulfillment in the life of a beatnik. This is clearly expressed in a line from "Jail Poems" "...thank God for

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