Cranial Guitar
Straight from some astral plane comes the ghost of this great Beat poet, packing a "sawed-off high chair" and bemoaning the "black carrot of denial, burned in the toasters of memory." This is not so much a collection as it is a steam-pipe explosion. Great bellowing clouds of imagery-dangerous, larger than life and amorphous as sweat-carry the old but juicy news of being on the bum in California and New York circa 1959, flashing the jazz, the drugs and the politics. Kaufman, as David Henderson explains in the extensive biographical introduction, was dead of emphysema by age 60. During his most creative years, he was an addict and a psychological mess. When Allen Ginsberg wrote (in "Howl") of "the best minds of [his] generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked," he may well have been thinking of Kaufman.-- generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked," he may well have been thinking of Kaufman.Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.