Joanne elizabeth kyger biography of william
Register of Joanne Kyger Papers - MSS 0730...
Joanne Kyger
Photo by Andrew Kenower
Bio Notes & Bibliography
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Joanne Kyger was born in 1934 and attended Santa Barbara College.
Joanne elizabeth kyger biography of william
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 bo