"Bob Kaufman's life is written on mirrors in smoke."--Jack Kerouac

"So much did he embody a French tradition of the poet as outsider, madman, and outcast, that in France, Kaufman was called the Black Rimbaud."--David Henderson

"He was an original voice. No one else talked like him. No one else wrote poetry like him."--Lawrence Ferlinghetti

The Collected Poems of Bob Kaufman brings together every known surviving poem by this major African-American surrealist, including the three books published in his lifetime, Solitudes Crowded with Loneliness, Golden Sardine, and The Ancient Rain. With over 30 previously uncollected works, Collected Poems is the first comprehensive presentation of this truly original, streetwise autodidact and member of the Beat Generation. Included here are a foreword by devorah major, reminiscences by editors Raymond Foye and Neeli Cherkovski, and a biographical timeline by editor Tate Swindell, which chronicles this elusive poet's movements across the country and around the world. Collected Poems is a landmark poetic achievement and marks Kaufman's welcome return to City Lights Publishers.