Joanne Kyger
Photo by Andrew Kenower
Bio Notes & Bibliography
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Joanne Kyger was born in 1934 and attended Santa Barbara College.
One credit short of a degree, she drove up to San Francisco "one day
in January 1957 with [her] Siamese Cat." She arrived at the height of
the Howl obscenity trial, and a friend introduced her
to The Place, the bar that served as headquarters for Jack Spicer and
other poets of the San Francisco Renaissance. At the invitation of
Joe Dunn and John Wieners she attended the Sunday Meetings lead by Spicer
and Robert Duncan and gave her first reading at the Bread and Wine Mission
in 1959 before moving to Japan with Gary Snyder. Out of respect for local
custom, they married in Japan, living there & also travelling to India (with
Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlofsky), events that are chronicled in Kyger's
Japan and India Journals 1960-64. Kyger moved back
to San Francisco, was divorced from Snyder, published her first book
The Tapestry and The Web, travelled in Europe with Jack Boyce, and lived
in New York briefly before returning to California. She moved to Bolinas in 1968
where she has since lived, writing poetry, editing the local newspaper, travelling
to Mexico, and teaching occassionally at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied
Poetics at the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado.
Poetry
- Lo & Behold: Household and Threshold on California’s North Coast, Voices from the American Land, Vol 1 Number 1 Winter 2009
- Not Veracruz (Libellum, 2007)
- About Now: Collected Poems (National Poetry Foundation, 2007)
- Night Palace (Backwoods Broadsides, 2006)
- Detektivgeschichten Der Leidenschaft with Stefan Hyner, epilogue by Jack Collum (Stadtlichter Presse, Berlin, 2005)
- God Never Dies (Blue Press, 2004)
- The Distressed Look (Coyote Books, 2004)
- Ten Shines (Nijinsky Suicide Health Club, 2002)
- As Ever: Selected Poems (Penguin, 2002)
- Again: Poems, 1989-2000 (La Alameda Press, 2001)
- Some Life (Post-Apollo Press, 2000)
- Patzcuaro (Blue Millennium Press, 1999)
- Some Sketches from the Life of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (Boulder CO: Rodent Press & Erudite Fangs, 1996)
- Just Space: poems, 1979-1989 (Santa Rosa: Black Sparrow Press, 1991; illustrated by Arthur Okamura)
- Phenomenological (Canton, NY: Grove Pub., published for The Institute of Further Studies, 1989; illustrated by Donald Guravich)
- Man / Woman : two poems ("Man" by Joanne Kyger; "Woman" by Michael Rothenberg. Pacifica CA: Twowindows Press, 1987; illustrated by Nancy Davis)
- Going On: selected poems, 1958-1980 (NY: Dutton, 1983)
- Up My Coast (Point Reyes Station CA: Floating Island Publications, 1981; illustrations by Inez Storer)
- The Wonderful Focus of You (Calais VT: Z Press, 1979)
- Lettre de Paris (with Larry Fagin. Berkeley CA: Poltroon Press, 1977)
- All This Every Day (Bolinas CA: Big Sky, 1975)
- Places To Go (Los Angeles: Black Sparrow Press, 1970)
- Joanne (Bolinas CA: Angel Hair, 1970?)
- The Tapestry and the Web (San Francisco CA: Four Seasons Foundation, 1965)
Poetry and Prose-Journals
- Strange Big Moon: The Japan and India Journals, 1960-1964, (Bolinas CA: Tombouctou, 1981, reprinted North Atlantic Books, 2000)
- Mexico Blonde (Bolinas CA: Evergreen, 1981)
- Trip Out and Fall Back (Berkeley CA: Arif Press, 1974)
- Desecheo notebook (Berkeley CA: Arif Press, 1971)
E-Books
- Permission By The Horns: 2007-2008 Ungovernable Press Fall 2008
- Loose Renditions: Poems 2006-2007 Coyote Press Fall 2007
Broadsides
- The phone is constantly busy to you (Lawrence KS: Tansy Press, 1989)
- The bodhisattva of compassion (Berkeley CA: Poltroon Press, 1982?)
- Oy (San Francisco CA: Panjandrum Press, 1972)
- September (1970)
- The hindrance of lustful desire (1969)
- The white heron (1969)
- The fool in April: a poem in two parts (San Francisco CA: Coyote's Journal, 1966)
Interviews
- "Congratulatory Poetics: Joanne Kyger Interviewed," with Diana Middleton-McQuaid and John Thorpe, in Convivio (1983), pp. 109-120.
- "Three Version Versions of the Poetic Line," with Richard Blevins, in Credences 4 vol. 2, no.1 (1977), pp. 63-66.
- "A Conversation with Joanne Kyger," with Lawrence Nahem, in Occident 8 (Spring 1974), pp. 142-157.
Other
- Featured in The New Censorship vol. 4, no. 10 (January 1994)