Poet in Place and Time: Critical Essays on Joanne Kyger (Clemson University Press: Beat Studies)

By: Mary Paniccia Carden and Jane Falk

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Synopsis: Poet in Place and Time: Critical Essays on Joanne Kyger provides a much-needed re-evaluation of the work of Joanne Kyger, a remarkably productive poet associated with transformative literary movements of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Kyger uses time and place to anchor her writing in the present moment (as reflected in the title of her collected poems, About Now), and this collection employs a similar approach to present Kyger to readers who may be less familiar with her work. The essays take readers from her stay in Japan in the 1960s to her return to California and her life in Bolinas from the 1970s on, as well as her travels to places such as Desecheo Island and Mexico. The essays explore Kyger’s poetics through close readings of her poems and journals, as well as through her approach to issues which concerned her throughout her life; these issues include ecology, reinhabitation, the politics of NAFTA, and the War on Terror. Contributors also investigate her relation to feminism, Buddhism, and ecopoetics. Kyger’s connections to various movements in American literature are also emphasized, as well as ways in which she is part of but extends and improvises on the Beat Movement.