Bob Kaufman was born on April 18, 1925, in New Orleans, Louisiana. He was an American citizen who would go on to work as a poet, musician, and writer, producing his work in the English language. The circumstances of his early life in that Louisiana city preceded a path that eventually led him toward formal education and, in time, toward the literary world he would come to inhabit.

He attended The New School, where he received his education. As a poet and writer, Kaufman became associated with the Beat Generation, a movement with which his name remained linked throughout his career. His work spanned poetry and music, and he operated across both those registers as a practitioner of each.

Kaufman lived and worked as a poet, musician, and writer during the mid-twentieth century, a period when the Beat Generation occupied a recognizable place in American literary life. His association with that movement situated him among a set of writers and artists active during those decades. He worked in English, and his output as a poet formed the core of his engagement with that literary world.

Bob Kaufman died on January 12, 1986, in San Francisco — the city where his life ended after more than six decades. He had been born in New Orleans and educated at The New School, and he died associated with the Beat Generation, a movement he had been part of as a poet, musician, and writer throughout his working life.