Carolyn Kizer Biography

American poet, born in Spokane, Washington, educated at Sarah Lawrence College, Columbia University, and the University of Washington. In 1959 she founded the magazine Poetry Northwest, which she edited until 1965. Her verse is personal, reflecting love, loss, family life, and the courage of women. Among her earlier volumes are The Ungrateful Garden (1961), Knock upon Silence (1965), and Midnight Was My Cry: New and Selected Poems (1971). Although much of her work is woman-centred, it is almost entirely free of didacticism or stridency. Her awareness of the inherent tensions between male and female is voiced in the complementary volumes Mermaids in the Basement: Poems for Women (1984) and The Nearness of You: Poems for Men (1986). Another volume, Yin (1984), contains autobiographical material. Kizer has lived in Pakistan, and her interest in the verse forms of the Urdu language is reflected both in her translations and in her own writings. Japanese and Chinese influences are also discernible in her work. Her best translations from these languages and others have appeared in Carrying Over (1988), which includes translations from the work of the popular woman poet of Mainland China, Shu Ting. Her interest in interrelationships between male and female, and between conflicting cultures, is balanced in characteristic Taoist fashion.