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Strange Big Moon: The Japan and India Journals, 1960-1964
 
 
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Strange Big Moon: The Japan and India Journals, 1960-1964 [Paperback]

Joanne Kyger (Author), Anne Waldman (Foreword)
5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)

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"Kyger is 'self' conscious enough to laugh at herself. She never stoops to sentimentalizing, never drifts into writing-as-therapy, as so much current 'journaling' does. Yet the writing of these pages is her salvation."
—Anne Waldman, from the Foreword

"Her journals chronicle what it meant to be a woman trying to write in those pre-feminist beat days, when men were the ones designated as spiritual and creative. Kyger has a sharp wit and a sharper eye."
—Miriam Sagan

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Hungry to explore Zen and make the discoveries that would shape a lifetime of poetry, Joanne Kyger left for Japan in her twenties and returned four years later ready to carve out a substantial niche in San Francisco's Beat poetry movement. Whether she is studying under Zen teacher Ruth Fuller Sakaki or meeting with the Dalai Lama (who at 27 "lounged on a velvet couch like a gawky adolescent in red robes"), her journals are witty, amusing, and intelligent, in this fascinating look at the art of poetry and portrait of the counterculture abroad.
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Unattractive party last night, at the Green Valley for breakfast with poetry friends and to dinner with Philip and Lew at Pizza Place in North Beach exhausted. Read the first page
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5.0 out of 5 stars Sei Shonagon updated, July 17 2003
This review is from: Strange Big Moon: The Japan and India Journals, 1960-1964 (Paperback)
This book reminds me of Sei Shonagon, but the cast of characters is often well-known Beat writers. Kyger was married to Beat saint Gary Snyder at the time, but she is iconoclastic in regards to presenting him here. The arc of the book is their love story -- beginning with a shy and rather impressed Kyger and ending with a rather loud and irreverent Kyger. Early on she worships Snyder, but then he knocks her down and splits her head open on a wood table when she refuses to do the dishes. He is surly throughout the book, and given to bad moods, and kicks her at least twice.

Kyger gets it all down.

Beat saint Allen Ginsberg grabs his food at the communal dining hour and shoves his face full without waiting for others to be served. Orlovsky is shoving drugs in his face every moment that he can.

This is a funny book that knocks out stereotypes left and right. In one or two sentences she undoes the career of Paul Blackburn, for instance. And all the while she is musing on the possibility of a female literature, and what it might consist of -- something for which she had no clear legacy in American but the Japanese writers of the Heian period such as Sei Shonagon appear to have given her the inspiration needed.

This is a very good book for those who are tired of the Beats self-sanctification, and want a bit of humorous and unsparing insight into their world.

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Amazon.com: 5.0 out of 5 stars (1 customer review)

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Sei Shonagon updated, July 17 2003
By Bob Swain "Seattle" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Strange Big Moon: The Japan and India Journals, 1960-1964 (Paperback)
This book reminds me of Sei Shonagon, but the cast of characters is often well-known Beat writers. Kyger was married to Beat saint Gary Snyder at the time, but she is iconoclastic in regards to presenting him here. The arc of the book is their love story -- beginning with a shy and rather impressed Kyger and ending with a rather loud and irreverent Kyger. Early on she worships Snyder, but then he knocks her down and splits her head open on a wood table when she refuses to do the dishes. He is surly throughout the book, and given to bad moods, and kicks her at least twice.

Kyger gets it all down.

Beat saint Allen Ginsberg grabs his food at the communal dining hour and shoves his face full without waiting for others to be served. Orlovsky is shoving drugs in his face every moment that he can.

This is a funny book that knocks out stereotypes left and right. In one or two sentences she undoes the career of Paul Blackburn, for instance. And all the while she is musing on the possibility of a female literature, and what it might consist of -- something for which she had no clear legacy in American but the Japanese writers of the Heian period such as Sei Shonagon appear to have given her the inspiration needed.

This is a very good book for those who are tired of the Beats self-sanctification, and want a bit of humorous and unsparing insight into their world.

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