Naphtali "Tuli" Kupferberg (September 28, 1923 – July 12, 2010) was an American

counterculture A counterculture is a culture whose values and norms of behavior differ substantially from those of mainstream society, sometimes diametrically opposed to mainstream cultural mores.Eric Donald Hirsch. ''The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy''. H ...

poet, author, singer,

cartoonist A cartoonist is a visual artist who specializes in both drawing and writing cartoons (individual images) or comics (sequential images). Cartoonists differ from comics writers or comic book illustrators in that they produce both the literary and g ...

, publisher, and co-founder of the rock band

The Fugs The Fugs are an American rock band formed in New York City in late 1964, by the poets Ed Sanders and Tuli Kupferberg, with Ken Weaver on drums. Soon afterward, they were joined by Peter Stampfel and Steve Weber of The Holy Modal Rounders. K ...

Biography

Naphtali Kupferberg was born into a Jewish, Yiddish-speaking household in New York City. A ''

cum laude Latin honors are a system of Latin phrases used in some colleges and universities to indicate the level of distinction with which an academic degree has been earned. The system is primarily used in the United States. It is also used in some Sou ...

'' graduate of

Brooklyn College , mottoeng = Nothing without great effort , established = , parent = CUNY , type = Public university , endowment = $98.0 million (2019) , budget = $123.96 m ...

in 1944, Kupferberg founded the magazine ''Birth'' in 1958. Kupferberg reportedly appears in Ginsberg's poem '' Howl'' as the person "who jumped off the

Brooklyn Bridge The Brooklyn Bridge is a hybrid cable-stayed/ suspension bridge in New York City, spanning the East River between the boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn. Opened on May 24, 1883, the Brooklyn Bridge was the first fixed crossing of the East Rive ...

and walked away unknown and forgotten into the ghostly daze of

Chinatown A Chinatown () is an ethnic enclave of Chinese people located outside Greater China, most often in an urban setting. Areas known as "Chinatown" exist throughout the world, including Europe, North America, South America, Asia, Africa and Aust ...

soup alleyways & firetrucks, not even one free beer." The incident in question actually occurred on the

Manhattan Bridge The Manhattan Bridge is a suspension bridge that crosses the East River in New York City, connecting Lower Manhattan at Canal Street with Downtown Brooklyn at the Flatbush Avenue Extension. The main span is long, with the suspension cable ...

. Ginsberg's description in ''Howl'' uses poetic license. Kupferberg did jump from the Manhattan Bridge in 1944, after which he was picked up by a passing tugboat and taken to Gouverneur Hospital. Severely injured, he had broken the

transverse process The spinal column, a defining synapomorphy shared by nearly all vertebrates, Hagfish are believed to have secondarily lost their spinal column is a moderately flexible series of vertebrae (singular vertebra), each constituting a characteristic ...

of his spine and spent time in a body cast. In 1964, Kupferberg formed the satirical rock group

the Fugs The Fugs are an American rock band formed in New York City in late 1964, by the poets Ed Sanders and Tuli Kupferberg, with Ken Weaver on drums. Soon afterward, they were joined by Peter Stampfel and Steve Weber of The Holy Modal Rounders. K ...

with poet Ed Sanders. Kupferberg was active in New York pacifist-anarchist circles. In 1965 he was one of the lecturers at the newly founded

Free University of New York The Free University of New York (FUNY) was an educational social enterprise initiated by Allen Krebs, Sharon Krebs and James Mellen in July 1965. as reproduced in FUNY began as a home for professors dismissed from local universities for prot ...

. He appeared as a machine-gun-toting soldier policing Manhattan in '' W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism'', a 1971 film about the revolutionary psychiatrist

Wilhelm Reich Wilhelm Reich ( , ; 24 March 1897 – 3 November 1957) was an Austrian doctor of medicine and a psychoanalyst, along with being a member of the second generation of analysts after Sigmund Freud. The author of several influential books, most ...

Dušan Makavejev Dušan Makavejev ( sr-Cyrl, Душан Макавејев, ; 13 October 1932 – 25 January 2019) was a Serbian film director and screenwriter, famous for his groundbreaking films of Yugoslav cinema in the late 1960s and early 1970s—many of wh ...

. An anti-police-brutality skit from his Revolting Theatre appeared in the 1971

Richard Pryor Richard Franklin Lennox Thomas Pryor Sr. (December 1, 1940 – December 10, 2005) was an American stand-up comedian and actor. He reached a broad audience with his trenchant observations and storytelling style, and is widely regarded as on ...

underground film '' Dynamite Chicken''. In 1972, Kupferberg played the role of

God In monotheistic thought, God is usually viewed as the supreme being, creator, and principal object of faith. Swinburne, R.G. "God" in Honderich, Ted. (ed)''The Oxford Companion to Philosophy'', Oxford University Press, 1995. God is typically ...

in the Canadian experimental film ''

Voulez-vous coucher avec God? ''Voulez-vous coucher avec God?'' ("Do you want to sleep with God?") is a 1972 Canadian experimental film directed by Jack Christie and Michael Hirsh. Combining live-action and animation, the film is heavily steeped in late 1960s - early 1970s co ...

''. Kupferberg later appeared in the music video for ''Williamsburg Will Oldham Horror'' by Jeffrey Lewis. Kupferberg suffered a stroke in April 2009 at his home in New York City, which left him severely visually impaired and in need of regular nursing care. After treatment for a number of days at a New York hospital, followed by convalescence at a nursing home, he recuperated at home. Kupferberg died in New York Downtown Hospital in Manhattan of kidney failure and sepsis on July 12, 2010.Tuli Kupferberg, Poet and Singer, Dies at 86
Artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com In 2008, in one of his last interviews, he told ''

Mojo Magazine ''Mojo'' is a popular music magazine published monthly in the United Kingdom, initially by Emap, and since January 2008 by Bauer. Following the success of the magazine '' Q'', publishers Emap were looking for a title that would cater for the bur ...

'', "Nobody who lived through the '50s thought the '60s could've existed. So there's always hope."''Mojo Magazine'' #203, October 2010, p. 34

Bibliography

*''Birth 1, The Bohemian Issue'' (1958) *''Birth 2, Children's Writings'' (1959) *''Beating'' (1959) *''Children as Authors: A Big Bibliography'' (1959, with Sylvia Topp) *''Snow Job: Poems 1946–1959'' (1959) *''Selected Fruits & Nuts'' (1959) *'' Birth 3, parts 1 & 2 Stimulants, An Exhibition'' (1960) *''1001 Ways to Live Without Working'' (1961) *''The Grace & Beauty of the Human Form'' (1961) *''1001 Ways to Live Without Working" (1961, rev. 1968; German translation by Max Wickert & Hubert Kulterer, with facing English text, Stadtlichter Presse 2009, 2015) *''3,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Beatniks : or, The War Against the Beats'' (1961) *''Sex and War'' (1962) *''The Mississippi (A Study of the White Race)'' (1962) *''The Rub-Ya-Out of Omore Diem'' (1962) *''The Christine Keeler Colouring Book & Cautionary Tale'' (1963) *''Kill for Peace'' (1965) *''Caught in the Act: a Legal Vaudeville'' (1966) *''The Book of the Body'' (with Judith Wehlau, 1966) *''I Say to Masturbate is Human, to Fuck Divine'' (1966) *'' 1001 Ways to Beat the Draft'' (with Robert Bashlow, 1966) *''Fuck Nam : a morality play'' (1967) *''1001 Ways to Make Love'' (1969) *''Newspoems'' (1971) *''Listen to the Mockingbird; satiric songs to tunes you know'' (1973) *''As They Were'' (with Sylvia Topp, 1973) *''Universal Housewife'' (1975) *''First Glance'' (with Sylvia Topp, 1978) *''As They Were Too'' (with Sylvia Topp, 1979) *''O God!'' (1980) *''The Crazy Paper'' (1980) *''Less Newspoems'' (1981) *''Questionable Cartoons'' (1981) *''True Professions'' (1981) *''Why Don't We Do It in the Bed?'' (1982) *''Was It Good For You Too?'' (1983) *''After the Balls Are Ova'' (1984) *''In Media's Feces'' (1986) *''Kill For Peace, Again'' (1987) *''Reaganation'' (1987) *''The Tuli Kupferberg Instant Lottery Broadside'' (1988) *''The Dark Night of the Soul in the Poetry Mines'' (1988) *''Signed By the Artist'' (1990) *''Don't Make Trouble'' (1991) *''My Prick is Bigger Than Yours'' (1992) *''The Land that God Remembered'' (1992) *''The Old Fucks at Home'' (1992) *''You Know Helen : Maybe Chimps Know a Lot More Than We Think'' (1994) *''Hey Ann! : What's The Diff Between Religion & Patriotism?'' (with Dave Jordan, 1994) *''Whitman said : "In order to have great art you have to have great audiences!"'' (1994) *''When I Hear the Word 'Culture' I Reach for My Gun'' (1994) *''I Hate Poems About Poems About Poems'' (1994) *''Great Moments in the History of Sport : No. 4, The Spartans Invent Football'' (1994) *''Teach Yourself Fucking'' (2000) *''Paris I Have Never Seen'' (2001)

Biography

Bibliography

References

Further reading

External links