Joanne Kyger

Joanne Kyger [The Allen Ginsberg Project]

from Joanne Kyger's Strange Big Moon: The Japan and India Journals: 1960-1964:

January 18, 1963. Friday.

Nansen gets scared to pee by big black & white cap over the garbage pit. Losing his obedient kitten charm. Ginger was how old? when Kenny Gibble taught him to retrieve.

Hair cut shorter and the set this time is quite nice. To Matsushita student: what's steak? It's a piece of burned meat.
                                      Beginning a bit to melt but snow still in the garden from the big snow when John was here.

Dreams:
Last night: Ami and Pete and their relationship. After the birth of their child we all live in place like deserted camp. Others with shag rugs for blankets, not too clean — we have none — but should have some for her, her child is the son of god, near tears, and great furs are piled around her and she's brought to a table, a dinner in her honor. Careful not to provoke any outbursts or bad temper between them. Will in the pleasanter mood. Full of them when I awake.

               Exercises in the morning:

sit ups, touch toes, push ups, throw elbows back, raise legs on back.

Reading Ezra Pound biography. Now: could a woman ever be a great poet, write an epic the way he says a great poet must, have the command of a world/universal view. More particularly her craft seems to deal with parts, particulars,

The changing face — the neckline.

What can I know without reading & observing all of
mankind: my own mind but a
                 risky & perhaps lopsided direction.

    Language has a chance with me

    picking out what of American language/slang
    /home
    talk is/will/last (ing).

              Vision of myself.
                     as a horrible witch
                     no precious sentiments.
                                        unstable.   panicked.

& a clinical observation that I like to touch
but not be touched.

pulling the little girl on to
                                him
he in the wheelchair.

December 19, 1963

Death was a pied piper of multiple men going through a house which was a city. Everyone was waiting for him. I, going to find the best room or section to die. A bar with loud and noisy men. I left. It's not right to die there. Returned to a room where I had passed before, thinking this is the best place, where 3 or 4 young girls and an old woman were laying on quilts and sheets on the floor to wait death. Before, I had gone out into a big kitchen-house and thought to escape out the door and away. In a fenced area I encountered a mad man, bald with a purple-red furious face who was kept there. Let me in let me in, the door wouldn't open. The woman in the kitchen with glasses and grumpy let me back into her kitchen. Who's that I said. It's Kruschev [sic]. Then to the room with quilts. Death with his flute could be heard coming nearer and nearer. I was getting a little nervous and tried to cover myself with a sheet to remain calm. One of the girls, Betty, got up at the last minute, dissarranging [sic] the bed and tried to dry a piece of laundry she'd done by waving it in the air. Lay down, the old woman said. It's silly to dry your clothes. You're going to die.

January 22, 1964

        When we leave
            Leave.     How do you leave.
        I never leave.      oh we know leaving
            one continuous motion until then
        winding ribbon
      curling leaves.

         Carrying on this burden
    that thinks and sees.
      Supported by water.      Loaded in

    Oh Oh detached.      peas, roast beef
corned beef hash.     choice of desert
    Oh Oh plastic cups.   Lux soap
         carry me away.     carry me away

February 3, 1964. Monday

Arrived S.F. Pier 50, waiting at dawn to go under the Golden Gate bridge, with the Indians and Jack Baumer.

Only Philip Whalen was waiting when I disembarked.