Everybody, it seemed, had a story to tell about Joanne Kyger. Another group was overheard recalling the wry sarcasm of Kyger’s remarks during a more recent colloquy of local poets held somewhere in the more densely populated tracts of Marin County, a dreadful but obligatory gig, no doubt, especially from a Black Bart Poetry Society perspective. One octogenarian couple debated details of a particular gathering long ago at what sounded like the Russian Hill home of Margot Patterson Doss, where Kyger and her colleagues would often congregate during the waning years of Beat-era San Francisco. Some silently grieved, others panted in exertion, still others engaged in conversation while others secretly listened, hearing tales of past encounters with the singular figure to whom they had all gathered to pay last respects. After staking out parking spots along the grassy, elevated edges of the long, level roadway leading to the venue, celebrants and unknowing conventioneers trod the gravel surface under extraordinary sunshine reminiscent of the recurring scene in Buñuel’s Discreet Charm Of The Bourgeoisies.

once delivered radio broadcasts across the Pacific.

This time the site was rural, with an infrastructure marginally equipped to handle the throng of fellow poets, neighbors, former newspaper colleagues and associates of Kyger’s, and possibly some curiosity seekers clued by an announcement on the Internet.Ī convoy of mostly fuel-efficient, hybrid or all-electric cars heading coastward on the Mesa Road out of Bolinas converged on Commonweal Retreat Center where the now defunct RCA Corp. Billed as “a celebration” of Kyger’s “life and work,” this second Black Bart Poetry Society convention had little in common with the first, held 35 years before in San Francisco. Sadly, Joanne would not have the opportunity to experience it, nor would the hundreds of participants, or the organizers, have a clue that they were a party to it. That time came on Jat the Commonweal Retreat Center in Bolinas. She wanted to have one in Bolinas: a really good idea, in theory. At least once during every conversation I had with her, Joanne Kyger would prod me to put together another Black Bart Poetry Society convention somewhere in Bolinas. The 2nd Black Bart Poetry Society Conventionĭecades passed, yet she persisted.

Broadside far from home rare