Joanne Kyger

Joanne Kyger was born in Vallejo, California, in 1934. After attending the University of California–Santa Barbara, she moved to San Francisco in 1957. There, she studied Zen Buddhism and joined a community of poets active in the San Francisco Renaissance, including Robert Duncan, Jack Spicer, Gary Snyder, and Philip Whalen.

She and Gary Snyder were married from 1960 to 1964. During this time, they lived together in Japan and traveled in India with Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky. In 1965, a year after their return to California, Kyger published her first poetry collection, The Tapestry and the Web (Four Seasons Foundation). In 1966, she married the artist Jack Boyce, whose drawings were featured in the book; they moved to Bolinas, California, in 1969 and divorced soon after.

Kyger was the author of over twenty collections of poetry, including About Now: Collected Poems (National Poetry Foundation, 2007), As Ever: Selected Poems (Penguin, 2002), Going On: Selected Poems 1958–1980 (Dutton, 1983), and Places to Go (Black Sparrow Press, 1970). She also published an account of her travels, Japan and India Journals, 1960–1964 (Tombouctou Books), in 1981.

Her poetry is known for its Buddhist influence and its natural imagery, often of the Northern California landscape. Of her work, Alice Notley writes, “Kyger’s major preoccupation is the attainment in quotidian life of that state where things and one are unveiled.”

Kyger is also known for her wide range of influence on future generations of poets and poetry movements. The poet Ron Silliman notes, “She’s one of our hidden treasures—the poet who really links the Beats, the Spicer Circle, the Bolinas poets, the New York School, and the Language poets, and the only poet who can be said to do all of the above.”

Kyger lived in Bolinas, California. She died on March 22, 2017.