I was excited to receive an email telling that this video of Joanne Kyger was recently uploaded to Youtube via The Poetry Project.
Poet Joanne Kyger is the author of Just Space: Poems 1979-1989, which includes such poems as “Bob Creeley Has Died And He Is To Have A Tibetan Ceremony,” “Day After Ted Berrigan’s Memorial Reading,” “Yesterday When Diana Drops Me Off On Evergreen,” and “You Believe This Stash Of Writing Is ‘scholarly’?” The book, published by Black Sparrow Press in 1991, is illustrated by Arthur Okamura. Kyger’s other works include The Tapestry and the Web (her first book); Strange Big Moon: The Japan and India Journals: 1960-1964 (foreword by Anne Waldman); God Never Dies; The Distressed Look; ; and her most recent, About Now: Collected Poems.
Joanne Elizabeth Kyger was born on November 19, 1934, in Vallejo, California. She studied at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and then moved to north, where the San Fransisco Renaissance was happening. In 1958 she met poet Gary Snyder, and when he moved to Japan she went too and married him on February 28, 1960. Together they later traveled to India, where they met up with Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky. By 1964, she was back in the US, and the following year she married painter Jack Boyce. They separated in the 70s. Kyger currently lives in Bolinas, California.
Check out her poetry online here.
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