What an event! Joanne Kyger, an active presence in the Bay Area poetry scene for forty years, has lived the life I've always dreamed of. She's the author of 14 books of poetry: she's seen it all, she's done it all, and she grows younger instead of older-my ideal! The friend of Olson, Spicer, Wieners, Berrigan, and so many more, Kyger has crafted a poetry of excitement and spiritual revelation which influences the younger generation of today. The range and energy of her writing seems to re-distribute the molecules of the air we breathe, and the social space we inhabit. Her most recent book is Some Sketches from the Life of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (Boulder: Rodent Press, 1996). This summer she will be teaching at the Naropa Institute.

May 2, 1997