1934-2017
Photo credit
Gloria Graham

Biography

Joanne Kyger was born in 1934 in Vallejo, California. Although she did not formally identify with any poetic movement, Kyger is considered a prominent female voice of the Beat Generation and the San Francisco Renaissance. She studied literature and philosophy at Santa Barbara College, where she was introduced to the work of Modernist poets like T.S. Eliot and W.B. Yeats, and Zen Buddhism, which would have a profound impact on her work. She was an avid traveller and returned to Mexico many times, finding inspiration in the culture and natural landscape. She believed in the importance of a daily literary practice, and many of her poems emerged from journaling. Kyger’s first poetry collection, The Tapestry and the Web, was published in 1965. She went on to author over thirty books, including There You Are, which was published posthumously in 2017.

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