Bob Holman is the author of
20 collections of poetry, most
recently LIFE POEM and THE UNSPOKEN,
written 50 years apart.

“Bob Holman is very aware that the poetry has to exist in raw lines of writing on printed surfaces, to lurk on fluttering pages on post-apocalyptic beaches.  That’s where we encounter his book, The Unspoken. Read it and ponder, then go into action.”  — Ed Sanders

“Life Poem is no ordinary book but a treasure, spontaneous from the heart. Treasure it!!” – Michael McClure 

“Bob Holman’s poems are full of jounce and pounce!” – Gwendolyn Brooks

“Bob Holman is one of my heroes. Forever and ever. His life gusto and poetry voice keep the world turning.” – Naomi Shihab Nye                  

“Bob Holman is the President of Poetry.” – Andrei Codrescu

The Unspoken

“The Unspoken, a book of poetry by Bob Holman. is proof that difficult can be brought together with illuminating. Bob Holman is rolling all his runes and Q-Lists (question lists) together in this book. He has fully harvested his “po-mind,” or Bard Brain.

These poems reveal how good willed and open he is.  The plethora of epithalamia, “praise poems,” and salutes to friends stand out. And especially poems to his wife Elizabeth Murray and their children.

He is seethingly on a vast search.  And in this search he’s absolutely unafraid to flash his quick-flowing torrents of words, lighting up the pages like millionfold assertions fast-mentioned in a fast-packed life-talk.

These poems can be seen as those of a transrealist chant-man, so committed to good issues, you wonder how he keeps his shoulder, sometimes so ouchingly, to the Wheel.  He is Always on the Move, his clipboard bulging with variegated projects, and always annotating and jotting verse on this surface, that, and the Other.  You become amazed how he ponders things on such a huge and multi-evented canvas.  Such as the love and zeal he commits for the protection and enhancement of endangered languages around the world. 

Bob Holman solidified his reputation on the stage of Perf-Po, or performance poetry.  For 8 years in the ‘80s and ‘90s Bob was the co-director of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe. In a vital exploration of the lovemaking between performance and poetry, Holman founded and hosted Nuyorican’s far-famed series of Poetry Slams.  He has also been active in the theater, as a producer and author.   And he’s produced a number of documentaries.

Of course Bob Holman, in these years which threaten a wasting nuclear war, is very aware that the poetry has to exist in raw lines of writing on printed surfaces, to lurk on fluttering pages on post-apocalyptic beaches.  That’s where we encounter his book, The Unspoken. 

Read it and ponder, then go into action.”

– Ed sanders

“Multi-activity demon Bob Holman has been a major force in poetry realms many moons, performing onstage all over the world with quick pulse and spontaneous wit, astute appraiser of the world’s turns and heaves and woes. He wakes you up with thrill of pun and madcap ecstatic praise song rhyme, and tender care for all that lives. His books sing and shout. Check out these documents emanating from a generous heart - wonderful sonorous poems - that as Allen Ginsberg would agree, “ease the pain of living.” – Anne Waldman

“In Bob Holman’s soulful, sly, exuberant, transnational poetry the dynamics at play include: despair ever foiled by absolute mad word love; open-hearted human recognition of all the possible micro and macro tear-opens poems ignite and record in the whole long universe; multiple languages — their densities and clarities and forms and paces brimming with transformation; praise, elegy, and in-motion-portraiture merged into a constellation that is life continuing because it’s the only thing to do — And these are just the openers! He is a sonic observer, channeler, chanter, maestro, maker and digger, as they say, of that crazy beat we all write into alive."

– Anselm Berrigan

What a lion Bob is, in search of and in defense of languages… and rock’n’roller. These poems are smart, funny and fulla fire, perfect friends with all the ears of earth’s bards. Built to float, borne over waters, sailing with song, traveling with tongues.”

– Tom Pickard

“Here is Bob Holman, master of ceremonies of the great Unspoken Word Movement, conductor of a chorus of powerful voices, poems, happenings, truths . . . Here is our history, a testimony of ourselves, to read when current events make us feel small or inadequate to the task of saving the world from neo-fascism. This is a must-read document and delight!”

— Margaret Randall

“Bob Holman is a one-of-a-kind poet/musician/playwright/engineer of language, and THE UNSPOKEN is a master work.”

– Dael Orlandersmith

“Bob Holman is widely known as the consummate spoken word maestro. Now he applies his explosive talents to the dark matter of the unspoken word. He helps us to see what can’t be heard. So very carefully unscrewing the turtle shell to reveal the sleeping mouse.”

– Elaine Equi

“Bob Holman has done it again. In this powerful collection of rumination and divination, Holman charts out a universe of the interior worlds he has navigated over the years. It stands as a testament to his determination that poetry and art are always in collision, and the world is a better place because of the power of language to give us tools we didn't know we had. A must read!”

– Paul D. Miller aka Dj Spooky

“Bob Holman is among the leaders who changed poetry from a dying art to a life-changing experience. He has put the livelihood of other poets above his own, and unselfishly opened the poetry world to believers of the “Word.” He’s like a scout who finds great poets before they find themselves. He has an unshaken belief in performance. Shakespeare said the world is a stage. Holman found a diverse group of people to fill the roles. His late wife, the artist Elizabeth Murray, and he have taken the frame, which only enclosed the subject, and transformed it into the art work. He has created a revolution in poetry without firing a shot at anyone. Who would believe a poet in love with John Ashbery’s verse would be able to create theatre where crowds come to share the joy of creation.”

– Hal Sirowiz, author of Mother Said, Former Poet Laureate of Queens, New York

“Bob Holman is an Action Figure of Speech.”

– Raymond Nat Turner

“The widely-traveled wisdom collector and poetry catalyst Bob Holman has an encyclopedist’s view of shining light on the many terra incognitas of the human condition, as well as of his own psyche. His new books continue to make compelling music and teach enthusiasm and courage. Holman is open like Apollinaire’s “upside-down heart.” The river of his poetry has widened considerably in the many years he has promoted, researched and written his song. His new books are free, wise, and drenched in the light of decades of service to our art.  Bob Holman is the President of Poetry.”

 – Andrei Codrescu, Author of “No Time Like Now” (Pitt Poetry Series, University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019) 

“Bob Holman is poetry in the flesh. He has not only blazed a trail, he has lived the trail. In a poetic landscape of YouTube views and social media likes, Bob’s work is now more important and authentic to the soul of the movement he helped build than ever before.”

– Cary Goldberg

“With prodigious energy and generosity, Bob Holman is a global poet.”

– Aram Saroyan

“I’m reading Bob in the garden and on the mountain top, I’m reading Bob in the bathroom and in underwater caves too, I’m reading Bob on the seesaw and bobsledding, I’m reading Bob downtown and uptown, even if my town doesn’t have an uptown, I’m reading Bob with my headphones on and blindfolded, I’m reading Bob in my wheelchair, bobbing up and down the streets, I’m reading Bob standing on my head and tiptoeing too, I’m reading Bob in India, even though I’ve never been to India, I’m reading Bob in the kurhaus, sporting my bob, yessiree, Bob, and I’m reading Bob dancing, singing, chanting and drinking and abstaining too, I’m reading Bob when I’m sad with the world, and when I want to be touched by the world, and I’m reading Bob when I’m ecstatic with world, I’m reading Bob, and so should you.”

– Christophe Keller

“Poetry is the insanity that makes us sane. Bob Holman is a true poet. Why not be in love? What is the big goddam reason for not being in love? It's raining poems, and we are the grass they nourish. He swims in the Sargasso Sea of the double-alphabet – and we swim with him. Bob Holman is the Rumi of the Bowery.”

– Sparrow

“A surprisingly touching mix of New York School poems, lyrics, and genuine, street-wise raps worthy of a blood-box Jedi master.”

– San Francisco Poetry Flash

Half a century ago, on his twentieth year on this planet, Bob Holman set about to write a spontaneous book directly from his life. This new edition is good news. The result, a 100 page poem, Life Poem, does not remind me of any book that I've read. Instead it makes me think of Picasso's painting, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, when the young painter, with an intuitive leap of intellect, painted a face, unrelated to the other Demoiselles of an African mask upon one of them. So, zut! now I think of Holman as a Picasso-type artist.... To write a book-length at the age of twenty on no subject except himself has the chutzpah and the energy that we expect from Picasso. And there is always a war beneath the outer surface. In Life Poem, it is Vietnam. Picasso and/or Holman or Holman and/or Picasso, best fits my understanding of this book by the 20-year old poet. It is no ordinary book but a treasure, spontaneous from the heart. Holman and the Demoiselles of Avignon. The Demoiselles and Bob Holman. Treasure it!!

— Michael McClure

Yes yes yes! Bob Holman's poems explode with jounce and pounce!

– Gwendolyn Brooks

Bob’s all the things and that’s why I can’t stop reading him or wanting to have lunch with him. He, the life poem, is silly, erotic, thoughtful, political before and after anyone, irrepressible and constant. How much can be like this and not be the very earth itself. 

– Eileen Myles  

This poetry on the tip of the poet's tongue. From his mouth to your ear. "Desperate to be a poet," he says, "desperate not to let anything escape. A young man whose father had killed himself when he was 2, has found something that will never be lost . . ." And he gives this thing he has found to us, his grateful readers! This is the real thing!

– Margaret Randall

Whimsical, this poem/saga of ice-cream and vinegar/drizzled with jest.

– Ali Cobby Eckermann

In the life of the poet, life is the poem. Bob Holman has always worn his sleeve, openly, on his lucid heart; unfolding over his many loves; of language, of intimacy, of teaching, of wonder, of words. Life Poem is Holman’s primal scream: all of us can be the poem!

– Edwin Torres

Up in embryo, spinning in pre landin' gEar... In the beginning... of BH's initial time a wholearth of lines, notes, full headed poems were bob bob bobbing along. With joy and flammable turnstyles, sound and anti-reason teased... Out of the blue.... Ore reading treasure... Solid Bob... earth code langue sign's. Decant'd d'cantor whine of the times. Wherever poemanations like these go to love.

– Julie Patton

Bob Holman has two books coming out, written 50 years apart! Well, we’re up to something then.

Even fewer years apart, Bob knew how to surprise and amaze me.

In 1996, he put me between two ladies in pink, to open the Annual Grand Slam at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe.

In 2003, we jammed with South African musicians near the Kruger National Park.

In 2011, Bob caught me totally unexpectedly in Addis Ababa.

In 2019, he’ll have me stay in his guest room, holy grounds where so many famous poets slept.

I’m already looking forward to 2026! 

– Jaap Blonk

When the definitive history of the downtown poetry scene is finally written, the name of Bob Holman will be central to the carnivalesque narrative of this most fluid of avant-gardes.

– Michael Lindgren

Bob Holman is the President of Poetry.

– Andrei Codrescu

Good job, Bob.

– Lou Reed