On Time: Poems 2005–2014

Nearly a decade in the making, Kyger’s (About Now: Collected Poems) much-anticipated new collection bursts with spontaneity, wit, and a delightful swiftness akin to “the wheel/ of mind restless as five monkeys/ running in place.” Now 80, she writes that she doesn’t “like the word ‘old’/ when speaking about myself—/ preferring the word ‘mature’,” and she retains the wildness of the beat generation and Black Mountain School in her sprawling form, seasoned by her many travels and commitment to Zen Buddhism. Each poem is marked with its date of composition, as though jotted off in flashes of inspiration, and the content flits from world politics to journeys in Oaxaca, Mexico, to reminiscences of late friends such as conservationist Peter Warshall, fellow poet Allen Ginsberg, and artist Arthur Okamura (to whom the book is dedicated). Though there are twinges of sorrow, they always appear with an irrepressible, almost self-deprecating humor: “It’s all right to feel glum while cooking the oyster stew,” she writes. Kyger never lacks for source material—“ ‘Everything’ is poetry, animated, kicking its heels”—and in celebrating her own “Mega-Maturity” she states that “understanding the grief of passing with clarity gives every moment a monumental heart.” [em](June) [/em]