Happy Birthday! – Happy Scorpio Birthday – Joanne! – It’s the birthday today of the great Joanne Kyger. Her 2012 reading at the St Marks Poetry Project may be viewed here
A Naropa reading from the same year can be found here (and includes the following “found piece” – “Allen Ginsberg On His Search” – Allen Ginsberg, in Chile, 1960, staying with the poet Nicanor Parra outside Santiago – “I wish I knew who, if anyone, there is to work with who knows, if anyone knows, who I am, or what I am. I got so depressed after a while, I told him I didn’t give a shit for the suffering of the proletariat!“)
Speaking of 2012, Patrick James Dunagan reviews Joanne’s chapbook, 2012 (from Kevin Opstedal‘s shoe-string Blue Press) here.
Footage of her and Michael Rumaker (reading from their early letters, as part of the extraordinary CUNY Lost and Found Project can be seen here (Joanne appears approximately nine-and-a-half minutes into the video)
Her observations on that Lost and Found Project (the CUNY Poetics Department Initiative) are here
Her observations on The Curriculum of The Soul, on Richard Brautigan, and on Lew Welch (Lew Welch, William Carlos Williams, and Gertrude Stein) can be found here.
Here‘s her recent comments on Bruce Conner for San Francisco’s Modern Art Museum.
Here’s a heart-warming story – Joanne Kyger saved my life! – no kidding!
Previous Joanne postings on The Allen Ginsberg Project here and here.
A “national treasure”!