TWA Poet: Bob Kaufman

1925 - 1986 “Sometimes when the wind is blowing in my hair, I cry because its coolness is too beautiful”

It is the birthday of the man who inspired the word "beatnik" in the 1950s: poet Bob Kaufman , born Robert Garnell Kaufman, in New Orleans, Louisiana (1925). Kaufman's mother was a Roman Catholic woman from Martinique who loved to play the piano and buy books at auctions. His father was a German Jew; "my Negro suit has Jew stripes," Kaufman often said …