Since I’ll be discussing the online Eclipse Archive today as part of my contribution about websites, I wanted to include a file from their archives (Eclipse is an archive of American poetry that catalogues and hosts images of “avant-garde” manuscripts from 1945 on — I use “avant-garde” in quotes because the site complicatedly does not address its criteria for inclusion in this category, and in my opinion provides a somewhat narrow – eclipsed – view of post-1945 poetics history). This particular document is Bob Kaufman’s “Abomunist Manifesto” published by City Lights, and I think it gives a sense for the contributions Kaufman made to the City Lights (San Francisco) community and Beat history. There’s also a recent documentary playing in New York currently on Kaufman, “And When I Die, I Won’t Stay Dead,” directed by Billy Woodberry.

http://eclipsearchive.org/projects/ABOMUNIST/Abomunist.pdf