And When I Die, I Won't Stay Dead

Surrealist poet Bob Kaufman (1925-1986) was a legendary figure among the San Francisco North Beach "Beat" scene, although abundant gossip about his eccentricities, drug and alcohol use, dysfunctional personal relationships, and likely mental instability tended to overshadow his literary legacy. As a black member of the Beats circle (albeit a furtive, enigmatic figure on the fringes), the New Orleans-born Kaufman defied stereotypes of the Beats as apolitical; he faced persecution for relationships with white women and invoked angry themes in his work. For publishers/academics, an encounter with Kaufman brought awestruck thought-he-was-dead reactions, while coffeehouse folklore claimed (inaccurately) that Kaufman had not uttered a word since the assassination of JFK. Because of the mythology surrounding him, little solid biographical material on Kaufman was even sought before his death, and this cinematic portrait-album from filmmaker Billy Woodbury relies on lots of oral testimony and tangents (the McCarthy Red Scare, racism in the labor movement, the 1948 presidential elections) to flesh out the story of its reticent subject and his formative influences. Recitations by Roscoe Lee Brown, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, and the filmmaker himself should help restore appreciation of Kaufman's somewhat overlooked—or at least overshadowed—jazz-influenced prose. Recommended. Aud: C, P. (C. Cassady)