Tuli Kupferberg
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Tuli Kupferberg (born September 28, 1923) is an American counterculture poet, author, cartoonist, anarchist, and publisher and co-founder of the band The Fugs.
A cum laude graduate of Brooklyn College in 1944, Kupferberg founded the magazine Birth in 1958. Birth only ran for three issues but published notable Beat Generation authors like Allen Ginsberg, Diane Di Prima, LeRoi Jones, Ted Joans amongst others in the Beat circle. Kupferberg reportedly appears in Ginsberg's poem Howl as the person "who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge this actually happened and walked away unknown and forgotten into the ghostly daze of Chinatown". Kupferberg self-published the book Beatniks; or, The War Against the Beats in 1961.
In 1964, Kupferberg formed the satirical rock group The Fugs with poet Ed Sanders. Kupferberg took their name from Norman Mailer's substitute for the word "fuck" in his novel The Naked and the Dead. He was one of the band's singers and wrote many of their songs. He also released two solo albums: No Deposit, No Return (1964), a collection of spoken word poetry, and Tuli & Friends (1989).
Perhaps his best known book is 1001 Ways to Beat the Draft (1966), a satirical collage created with Robert Bashlow. In 1967 he wrote 1001 Ways to Live Without Working, which actually contains 1005 ways to live without working, and also a number of very interesting old ads, for instance referring to raffles for slaves and unfailing ways to cure cancer and obesity. His most recent work is Teach Yourself Fucking (2000), a collection of cartoons that was published by Autonomedia.
Kupferberg is active in New York anarchist circles.
He was featured in a cameo appearance in the Jeffrey Lewis music video for Williamsburg Will Oldham Horror.[1]
[edit] Some songs written by Tuli Kupferberg
- Super Girl
- Seize the Day (Carpe Diem)
- Nothing
- The Ten Commandments by God
- Hallucination Horrors
- CIA Man
- Coca Cola Douche
- My Bed Is Getting Crowded
- Caca Rocka
- Kill For Peace
- Morning, Morning
- The Garden Is Open
- Dover Beach (to Mathew Arnold poem)
- Life Is Strange
- When The Mode Of The Music Changes
- Bum's Song
- Flower Children
- Children Of The Dream
- Defeated
- Jackoff Blues
- The Smoking Gun
- Here Comes the Levellers
- The Ballade of the League of Militant Agnostics
- If You Want to Be President
[edit] See also
- Charters, Ann (ed.). The Portable Beat Reader. Penguin Books. New York. 1992. ISBN 0-670-83885-3 (hc); ISBN 0-14-015102-8 (pbk)
- W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism
