Kupferberg, Tuli, 1923-2010

Naphtali "Tuli" Kupferberg (September 28, 1923 – July 12, 2010) was an American counterculture poet, author, singer, cartoonist, pacifist anarchist, publisher, and co-founder of the band The Fugs. Naphtali Kupferberg was born into a Jewish, Yiddish-speaking household in New York City.[1] A cum laude graduate of Brooklyn College in 1944, Kupferberg founded the magazine Birth in 1958.[2] Kupferberg reportedly appears in Ginsberg's poem Howl as the person "who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge and walked away unknown and forgotten into the ghostly daze of Chinatown soup alleyways & firetrucks, not even one free beer." The incident in question actually occurred on the Manhattan Bridge.[3] 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.[4] Severely injured, he had broken the transverse process of his spine and spent time in a body cast.[5] In 1964, Kupferberg formed the satirical rock group the Fugs with poet Ed Sanders.[6] 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.[7] 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 by Dušan Makavejev. An anti-police-brutality skit from his Revolting Theatre appeared in the 1971 Richard Pryor underground film Dynamite Chicken. In 1972, Kupferberg played the role of God in the Canadian experimental film Voulez-vous coucher avec God?. Kupferberg later appeared in the music video for Williamsburg Will Oldham Horror by Jeffrey Lewis.[8] 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.[9] Kupferberg died in New York Downtown Hospital in Manhattan of kidney failure and sepsis on July 12, 2010.[10] In 2008, in one of his last interviews, he told Mojo Magazine, "Nobody who lived through the '50s thought the '60s could've existed. So there's always hope."[11]

Naphtali "Tuli" Kupferberg (1923-2010) was an American counterculture poet, cartoonist, publisher, activist, and musician. This collection reflects the varied, interconnected assortment of projects Kupferberg undertook beginning in the 1940s until his death in 2010, while living in lower Manhattan. Material in this collection includes essays, articles, and books by Kupferberg and his wife Sylvia Topp; work files for his and Topp's publishing company, Birth Press; fan mail, song lyrics, and recordings related to his band, The Fugs; props for his performance group, The Revolting Theater; and recordings of his local television show, Revolting News. His correspondence with authors including Sparrow, Urban Gwerder, Ted Joans, Walter Lowenfels, and Coby Batty, provide perspective into the network and relationships among the literary bohemian community within New York and beyond during the 1960s through 2000s. The bulk of the collection is Kupferberg's extensive research and source material grouped into subjects including sex, politics, smoking, religion, drugs, and education. Material within these subject files were used as inspiration or incorporated into works he wrote and performed. His significant collection of local, small-run independent published material as well as mainstream publications illustrates the output of writers and artists during these decades, and represents the interests of readers within the New York community and beyond.