Perhaps no American poet has been so reactive to, and beaten by, his times as Bob Kaufman (1925–1986). In North Beach, among the Beats, he was a street poet in the oral tradition, always on the outside; in Paris, he was the Black American Rimbaud. Even his FBI file credited him as a “smooth talker.” Like his hero, Charlie Parker, he lived in “that jazz corner of life,” and Billy Woodberry organizes his beautiful, soulful, picture-filled film on Kaufman in clear riffs and natural strains as they emerge from the telling of an uncompromising life of provocation and poetry.