Joanne Kyger

JOANNE KYGER's last book of poetry is Just Space, published by Black Sparrow Press in 1991. She teaches at The Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado and The New College of San Francisco. She first met Robin Blaser in 1959 in San Francisco.

“Up from Santa Barbara to San Francisco in early spring 1957 I went to work for Brentano’s Bookstore, downtown at the City of Paris. A friend soon introduced me to North Beach and a very small bar called The Place, where I met John Wieners and Joe Dunn, who invited me to the informal Sunday afternoon poetry meetings run by Duncan and Spicer. After attending a few Sundays, George Stanley, a loyal member, took me aside and said, pointedly, ‘Some people are treating these occasions like a party. If you want to continue attending, you’ll have to read your poetry.’ After a week of highly fraught preparation, I did. And passed the ‘test’. And became an ‘official’ part of the Sunday afternoons.”