Collected Poems of Bob Kaufman PBBob Kaufman (1925 1986) was one of the most important and most original poets of the twentieth century. He is among the inaugurators of what today is characterized as the Afro Surreal, uniting the surrealist practice of automatic writing with the jazz concept of spontaneous composition. He seldom wrote his poems down and often discarded those he did, leaving them to be rescued by others. He was also a legendary figure of the Beat Generation, known as