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Morton Marcus: Give Pause to Your Business, they have been promoting this program for quite some time. We are going to be talking as I said, with David Gitin. And if you have not heard of David Gitin, let me just tell you that he was one of the

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co-founders of the Poet's Theatre in San Francisco during the Haight Ashbury days. He has produced some radio shows in Berkeley, and live- has been living in Monterey, and David, you have a jazz show, do you not down there?

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David Gitin: Yes, I do, on KAZU. Morton Marcus: We- we don't say [inaudible] David Gitin: Yes. Ten years of the same- same slot. Morton Marcus: Yeah, well done after this. Let's just say, when

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would people hear you down there? What day what night? David Gitin: On Thursday evenings at 10pm. Morton Marcus: Great. And it goes from 10 to 12. David Gitin: That's correct

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Morton Marcus: David, you know, it's probably a corny question, but I happen to know that you had a long trek from the East Coast to the West Coast. Why don't you tell us a little bit about your early years.

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David Gitin: Well, I was raised in Buffalo, New York, which is on the edge of Canada. And spent a lot of my time in my adolescence in New York City and also in Canada in Toronto, and began to write at a very early age. I wrote plays in school, I

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was sent to the principal's office my first week of high school for writing a play in which a bum was going to throw a bomb, I guess, or something like that on a train and the language he spoke wasn't the same as that of my English teacher. So I

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learned early the rewards of creative writing. Morton Marcus: Now, you know that you- then- when did you way out to San Francisco, when was that around? What- What age? David Gitin: Well, in my early 20s, I was in New York City,

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and- Morton Marcus: Where did you go to school or college? David Gitin: I've been to many of them, but I graduated from Buffalo in philosophy.

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Morton Marcus: Okay. And went to graduate school in Pittsburgh for a while, and then became a social worker. And then, at that point finally, dropped out, as they say and hitchhiked across the country

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and wound up in San Francisco, which is a city I'd visited before and enjoyed. And landed in the Haight Ashbury, ran into an old friend within minutes, had a place to stay and remained.

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Well, what year was that? 1967- 67? The big year? David Gitin: Yeah. Morton Marcus: David, a corny question, but one that the listeners are interested in out there. How? When did you start

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writing poetry? David Gitin: The poetry, I think I wrote a little bit on demand in a sense, you know, again, in elementary school, high school, this kind of thing. And I began to find that there was a way to

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write modern poetry in college. I was attending poetry readings that I wasn‘t interested in, I couldn't stand the people that I was hearing, what we generally call academic poets. And the so called beat poets, people like Allen Ginsberg and Gregory

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Corso, for example, were our real liberation and spirit. And later poets like Charles Olson and Robert Creeley and others were very influential, I think and as example, as people giving somehow the example of how it was to be or to write poetry

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that was absolutely current and, and wasn't diminishing to the intellect. A lot of poems that were totally affective, were feeling that we‘re sort of one shot deals, very sentimental responses, in a sense, and the idea that you could actually

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explore, think, feel, find your way in a poem, and that a poem could be part of your own growth experience or finding out who you are and what you care about, I think was very important to me at that time.

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Morton Marcus: On the back of your new book, and that's one of the reasons you're here is because of this new book, which is called “Fire Dance“ by David Gitin, a lovely book as so many of the books that Blue Wind Press puts out are lovely.

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Robert Creeley has said about you, David Giten's an old time serious poet with a heavily light touch, dance to the music. I'd like to hear some of that music now. And if it illustrates anything we've just been talking about, I'd be delighted to have

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a poem that does that too. David Gitin: Okay, well, since you've mentioned both the Haight Ashbury and music, I'm going to read something from a book of early poems, or poems from Haight Ashbury notebooks in the

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late 60s, and this book was not available in United States, it was published in England. And the poem makes a direct reference to John Coltrane, I guess we'll be hearing something of his music a little bit later. The poem is entitled

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THE OCEAN Bones of dead fish stare at my shoes. Day settles on the calm of a Coltrane ballad. You don't know what love is and ache away from the desperate all, or nothing at all.

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Morton Marcus: Now your- your poems tends to be very, very condensed, and- and short usually. What- what makes some- I mean my- my moving for example is in the opposite way it's for enormously endless verbiage but you get it all down to a fine

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and tense rhythm. David Gitin: I think that's maybe part of the goal, the idea of poetry as being a concentration of language and also making use of the space around words, you know, letting

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the mind make those little leaps or ellipses, but I have written others that were really kind of margin to margin. It's just a matter of my own sensibility pulling toward this other form, I think. As I'm looking at this book, now, I see a couple of

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them that are a little different. Let me read one for contrast. Morton Marcus: Great. David Gitin: This was a- well I won't explain it, I'll just read

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it. Chopin, the grinny elf bends over his keyboard. Dark horses with foamy mouths hurtle into darkness. Ears start at each whisper demand proofs, fortunes rise and fall like a gypsy

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dance, death presents the menu. This is the end of the beginning, the macabre attic of childhood, eyebrows twitch to burning arrows, nothing achieves focus or dimension whirling, whirling. The elf bends, his pain obvious, the smile never

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yields, the dust of the horses is vapor, I breathe, awakened. So that's a direction that I did not pursue, an example of you know- part of that exploration that we were talking about earlier. Finding various ways to articulate or give form or voice

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to your consciousness and all of it‘s lumps and versions and in a sense boiling down something like that, or going through that experience, both verbally and personally to find my way to a statement that seems you know, where I am today.

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Morton Marcus: Where you are today, that's an interesting statement. I know, for example, for the last decade, you have been very seriously not publishing. Why don't you talk about that I-, there's so much and we've been talking about it

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over dinner, that young poets think that they should be competing with other poets and should be getting everything out into the marketplace all the time. You were in the marketplace, you were part of the whole Haight Ashbury scene,

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and then very consciously 10 years ago chose not to be part of that. Why- Why don't you just talk a little bit about it, anything that comes into your mind? David Gitin: Well, even the Haight Ashbury initially was not

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a marketplace, by the end it was, but initially I was publishing in little magazines in the East Coast where I lived, and thinking of you know, which magazine I wanted to be in and which other poets were in them with me or not in them, and that

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was very normal in a sense for that time, at least. And when I came to California, I was consciously getting away from all of that initially. I mean, even the Haight Ashbury was certainly not- not prominent for its literary magazines. But a

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couple of years after that, I started publishing a lot as I think young people want to do. You see your name in print, and this magazine in that and it's almost like collecting stamps, they're from all over the place, and you know, there's a sense of

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just getting work out there. But after a while, depending on your growth process, you know, these works don't hold up very well. It's a hard thing to admit, you know, since you wrote them and your name is on them, but it's not all gold. And I stopped

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publishing, generally speaking, in magazines by the mid 70s. There were a few exceptions. And as far as books went, the last book before this one was a book called “This Once“ which is a new and selected poems from 1965 through 1978. And that really

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was consciously summing up a period that I felt had ended. And I knew that whatever- I mean nothing comes from nothing, that obviously whatever work would follow would draw from the best of that, but I was determined not to publish, and consciously

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just to write as I did in the very beginning and evolve. And if it were the work was going to look like anything previous that I had done, or imitated the style in some other way, it wasn't interesting to me. And then I had the good fortune of

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having a family and, and learning to grow in ways there that I tried to articulate in the new book and try to have the book- I think this book is a lot warmer in a sense, and a lot of the personal pain or anguish or just beating the past and so-

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waiting 10 years, or working slowly and not knowing if in fact I would have another book or when I would have one, in a way was an advantage of sort of keeping my eye away from the public and not consciously being involved in the public pursuits

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of poetry and publishing or giving readings and so forth. And the irony of it was that it wasn't from neglect that I arrived to that position. I was doing pretty well actually with the last book, and I had to pull away from that in order to get

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serious about where I was now, and where I could go. I mean, what personally, you know in my life and what I really wanted words to do and what I felt I had to offer all those things that I think you worry about when the beginning when you're

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first writing I sort of had a new beginning a renaissance or something. Morton Marcus: So “Fire Dance“ really was written during this 10 years.

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David Gitin: Yes Morton Marcus: Really the the the- diamond tortured under pressure. David Gitin: Yes, that‘s one way to put it.

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Morton Marcus: Would you like to read, start to read the book? Or you can probably read the whole book and in this program, would you want to start doing that? Yeah, sure. David Gitin: There the book is, “Fire Dance“ is comprised really

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of four poems, and three of them in sections were- none any too long. And there's a conscious design to the book, the very first poem, the poem called the “Blessing“ in a sense inaugurates the book and that is made up of six earlier works, or

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versions of them that become a kind of suite, in a sense that has sort of a look over the shoulder at that solitary life, or a mentality or the struggle to find identity you could say, and so I deliberately put that in the book as a kind of

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introduction. And then the second poem in the book “Heartlight“ the one for Elvira and Deanna is this the centerpiece, in a sense. The third poem is a poem for my father, and- who died shortly after it was written. And the

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fourth poem, the last poem is the title poem, “Fire Dance“. So would you like me to start at the beginning? Morton Marcus: I love it. Yeah, I mean, that was, it seems like a great progression to me. We usually don't have a chance to

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do this to get through a whole book. Okay, and you've got an enlarged version of that. David Gitin: No, this is just the galleys, which make it easier for me to handle than turning pages.

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Morton Marcus: That's great. I can't tell you out there. This a beautiful light blue book, with what seems to be a horizon with a sun going down or coming up in the center of it. And then the pages are- have beautiful black end lines which get thinner and

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thinner, and they're just wonderful borders. Very lovely book. And really the problem I think of publishing a book with short poems, short lines on it, is that somehow they get lost on the page, but now they become an integral part of the page, it's

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a lovely book. It's feels lovely in the hand, and it's put out by Blue Wind Press, still in Oakland- Berkeley, Berkeley in 1989. Is it available anywhere around the Bay here? David Gitin: Well, it's distributed by Book People and

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Small Press Distributions, so any bookstore could get it, but the publisher of the book, who also did all the graphic design, is also a poet, which, which helps. Morton Marcus: Yeah.

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David Gitin: George Mattingly, so he's- he was sensitive to the work. I'd like to begin the book by reading the epigraph which is a quote from the poet Edmund Chavez(?). "We close our eyes to dissolve into the universe and be

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reawakened by it." Again, the first poem is called: THE BLESSING A tree on the bank downriver from the falls, roots exposed,

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clutchs stones for balance. Waters run gold with black silt, volcanic, yellow moon, yellow moon, no matter the road. Teeth rubbed with black powder, burnt eggplant, ache with the slick of rebirth. Out in the open the shimmer of light where the black

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top appears to end, curves to continue. Old friends gather and pass, I breathe out to the air plant. A leaf caught in the mouth, a tone in silence, news of a difference. And that's that- that first sequence we were just speaking

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of, again, each poem could and was, in fact, a separate poem. But together they give, I think the tone or the aura, from which the rest of it evolves. Should I go ahead with a-

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Morton Marcus: Why don't we do “Heartlight“, we can do all of that I'm sure about right, probably even before the break. David Gitin: Again, for the audience. Let me say that this next poem, the second one, “Heartlight“ is for Elvira and

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Deanna, my family, and it's divided into three sections. The first one is entitled “The "Call“. Second one is called “Dialogue“. And the third one is called “In Concert“. And the dialogue of the second part is actually a dialogue you could

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say with my daughter, she wrote two sections of the four and the minor kind of answering sections. "Heartlight,“ here is: THE CALL

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Picture a low sound of the space between people changing. The door slopes of light, your body a delay in glass. Deanna stares out at the world just before sleep, when masks float off, and we are all one.

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DIALOGUE Magic, where are you going? Dream time. That's all right. I wanna iguana, wanna iguana. Bubbles on a string in the roots of a tree, whose leaves and branches fill the universe. When

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I was in mommy's tummy, I saw spider woman behind your back. East, West, North, South, burning down the house until family, water from the well seasoned my lips to words that mend, I see the face of my ancestor once again.

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IN CONCERT The Earth rocks and sunlight reveals shadows of brilliant ways. Ourselves born on a wave to the place of trumpeting, a moment we embrace. Khadija(?), serpentine pride cannot enter,

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face upon face of the lotus. Every place I go keeps time in my heart with the people whose song dances on the tongue, changing the air. As you heard that's a poem very much about coming into family

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and recognitions and a kind of definition of love, you might say. Morton Marcus: Very [inaudible] Do you want to talk about any one of those sections? I mean, I

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myself have seen a lot of Zen imagery in there and Buddhist imagery, the Lotus for example, the- the recognition of the face of- of oneself before or as an ancestor. I mean, there are so many connections, could you- would you go through one poem

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before we take a break just one of these little sections and maybe give an exegesis for the, the people in the radio audience? David Gitin: Well, you're recognizing Zen and- and perhaps

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other Buddhist influences, and certainly one of the more famous Zen Koans asks what is- what was your face before your parents were born. But the music or the connection, the psychic connection of the first section of the call, which says "picture

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a low sound of the space between people changing," is really part of that news of a difference that I'm hinting at or finding my way through at the end of the blessing. And the idea that there's this space between people changing that there is -

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there is literally this vibration. I mean, we all feel it. It's a, whether it's a Kirlian aura, or whatever, the tactile sensation of other people and the arrangements or the vibrations between them. And the poem ends again on that

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changing so it's changing the air on the very last section of “Heartlight“, where it talks about the value of the music, "the song dances on the tongue, changing the air." You know, it's that feeling that finding community, which was so

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important to me, as you mentioned earlier in the Haight Ashbury and bringing it forward here in the sense of one's family and finding something positive to celebrate, to really sing, you know. What is it you really want to say? I think was

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part of what I was going through and writing this book and wanting to consciously to- to celebrate, you had to find a way to to give voice to poetry in a more positive way. So it's a poetry of statement, but at the same time, consciously song and

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dance as well. Morton Marcus: Okay, um, what about number two? I mean, I was- David Gitin: In “The Call“. Morton Marcus: Yeah. And I mean, what would- I'm imagining what a

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radio audience would- would hear in that? Well let me read it. And try to make the connections with it David Gitin: "The Door", this one?

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Morton Marcus: Yeah. David Gitin: THE DOOR Slopes of light, your body a delay in glass. Now this can be read, I imagine a number of ways I mean, at the

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most literal, literally when you open a door there are these in fact slopes of. Or seeing someone through the law- door, the prism of glass and I mean, glass imperfect. And even somebody coming through a door that you literally- your body a

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delay and glass and here also the sense of temporality, I mean, that that's, you know, grains of sand or silica that make up glass and then we're just passing through which is the name of another poem of mine. There are other

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afterimages in a sense that come out of this too. But I don't think the poem demands a great deal of the listener or- except to experience it and take it to those various places that people receive poetry and we were talking earlier about this, but

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our experience of poetry really is that we read them and hear them over and over again if we- if there's something attractive about them. And ideally, you said- used the word diamonds before, poems or- or literature in general resists all of our

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explanations and interpretations. There's something about it that we love that doesn't quickly codify or has processes that can't be translated, you know, it was lost in translation. A poem as simple as say, Blake's Tiger is

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fascinating to people of all ages regardless of the endless exegesis of the poem. Morton Marcus: The poems, I mean, I've already mentioned Zen Buddhism, but the poems really seem to partake of those short

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Japanese poems, normally Haiku, for example. And even the way it seems to me they work, the lines work against each other, the groups of lines, say couplets, working against each other. This suggestion that's coming out and actually a completed picture

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almost, that's coming out. What I like about this poem myself is that it's playing with the sensuousness or even sensuality of skin, that word slopes is terrific there, and then with the word body after that.

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David Gitin: Right. Morton Marcus: I mean, you really get a wonderfully sensuous sense of body, which then it's sort of turned inside out by the hardness of glass or separation of that.

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David Gitin: Yeah, all that stuff. True, I mean, I- you're definitely receiving it. And that- that's one of the ways that I think where that poem works. I should say, I mean, so that it doesn't sound like this endless vanity, that most of

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these were were worked over, you know, quite carefully over a period of years. I mean, each section of this, this book was probably three times its length at one point in time, you know, and the idea of a finally finding the image and the music

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and something that not only was complete in itself, but related to the other parts of the poem was something that I very consciously went after. Morton Marcus: Well, I hope that's helping the people out

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there. We're talking with David Gitin and we have read half of this new book already, and it's called “Fire Dance“ and we will be back with David and he‘ll be reading poems from this book and poems from other books. And right now we're going to take a

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little musical break and we will be right back with some announcements. And we're back again. And I should mention that we're playing “Crescent“ John Coltrane Quartet. You mentioned John

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before and not surprising out there I'm sure since David Gitin is a- or has a jazz show, and on down in Monterey on what is the station again? David Gitin: You want me to- KAZU on Thursday nights.

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Morton Marcus: We don't have to worry about ABC or CBS David Gitin: Okay. Morton Marcus: Let me announce “Play House“ on Thursday at 9pm radio drama from National Public Radio, leading off

00:26:26.610 - 00:26:42.120

[unidentified] celebration of Black History Month, this Thursday evening at 9pm "August Wilson's Sacred Book." August Wilson is a playwright whose ambition it is to dramatize onstage the history of Black Americans. He has completed six

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plays in a cycle of works, documenting each decade of African American life. Wilson has won America's top writing and drama prizes, including the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for Drama he shares his thoughts and feelings about his work in this program.

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Join us then on Thursday at KUSP from 9 to 9:30pm for "August Wilson's Sacred Book." That's KUSP 88.9 fm, and of course, then you can take- get a cup of coffee for half an hour and then tune in your show.

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David Gitin: Right! Morton Marcus: Meanwhile, Zachary's readings on February 7, Andrew Shelling, Jean Perulis and Myrna Alanna will be reading at Zachary's and as you know, these readings, because of the

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earthquake, have not been forthcoming. And now they have begun again and this is the first Wednesday night of every month from 7:30 to 9:30pm, that's from 7:30 to 9:30pm at Zachary's this February 7, Andrew Schilling, Jean Perulis

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and Myrna Alanna, so make it down there. There is an admission price but there is an open mic for work in progress afterwards. And if you forgot where Zachary's is, it's an 819 Pacific Avenue, downtown Santa Cruz. So we have got our

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announcements out of the way. And we are now ready to go back to David Gitin. And, David, what is the next poem we are- I should tell the audience out there, people who just tuned in, we are hearing David read his entire book, “Fire Dance“, which

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came out last year. And we have read the first two poems, and what are we going to read now, David? David Gitin: Well there's just, as I said earlier, only four poems in the book. So there's two more to come. And the book

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has just been out about three months, actually a little less than that. And this poem is called “Leisure World“, and it's in memory of my father. And originally, I had written this poem, and as you were saying earlier, I had chosen not to

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publish while I was working on this- what was to become this book. And somewhat mysteriously, I suppose I gave in to a request and let this poem this particular one be published in a magazine, and went down to visit my father and actually got to

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show it to him, and three weeks later, he died. So it's a poem about him and I- and so I've dedicated it in memory of my father. LEISURE WORLD

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She drives by on the overpass as he stands abandoned on the highway where his car has failed. No more roads. There's the garden, ripe tomatoes and wonderful books keep coming in at the library by the beach.

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Morton Marcus: What did he what was his reaction to the poem? David Gitin: I think he understood that this actual incident, this event that had occurred, you know, literally, this is a literal occurrence, I mean he literally had a car stop

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and had my mother's car drive by on the overpass, see her pass him where he was literally stuck. And his whole identification with the car and driving, and stopping driving was kind of the last stage of his retirement. And in a sense,

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it was a preparing for death, a subject that, as you know, in America is very taboo. But I wanted my father to realize that I understood, you know, that this last stage that he had gone into, and he knew what he was into, I mean he was just- just

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short of his 80th birthday when he died. And his statement, you know, his feeling of the garden, you know, of [inaudible], cultivating one's garden, those last moments, was a conscious one. I mean, he was a physical actual one as well as, you know,

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metaphorical one, you could say, and I think he understood this poem immediately. I mean, I think he really felt it. And interestingly, after my father died, and the book has come out, my uncle who was close to my father, read this poem and felt

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that he got insight into my dad. Morton Marcus: Mm hmm. David Gitin: So it's been one that in public readings has gotten a very strong reaction from audiences.

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Morton Marcus: We should mention, talking about public readings, that David is going to be giving a reading at Cabrillo College come April. And it's under negotiation right now, so we don't know the day. But it's not just going to be you, David,

00:31:21.320 - 00:31:34.670

why don't you tell us a little bit about the reading? David Gitin: You know, I've enjoyed collaborating with musicians, and painters, and video artists since the 1960s when I was a co-founder of Poets Theatre in San Francisco, which

00:31:34.670 - 00:31:49.640

you'd mentioned earlier. And I like the idea of poetry being vibrant and interactive. And I particularly enjoy sharing the stage, you could say, with musicians. So over the years, I've collaborated with a blues guitarist, and a synthesizer

00:31:49.640 - 00:32:05.240

player, and various other people. And Preston Houser is an old friend of mine who plays- used to play guitar and began studying shakuhachi about 11 years ago or so, moved to Japan where he studied intensively and actually gave concerts on the

00:32:05.330 - 00:32:20.540

bamboo flute, the shakuhachi, in Japan and- and did well. And has come back to the United States and he and his wife are living in San Francisco and he's been giving concerts there. He's been invited to appear in the [unidentified] of Japantown, the

00:32:20.540 - 00:32:34.310

Nihonmachi festival. So he and I just came up with the idea of doing these things together, of his performing on the Japanese bamboo flute, and not improvising, but playing classical pieces, pieces in the Zen tradition, in the honkyoku

00:32:34.340 - 00:32:50.900

tradition, about 300 or so years old, most of them, the contemporary say with J.S. Bach. And we tried to find pieces that would seem appropriate, somehow to these- to these poems. And he and I did a series of readings in Northern California doing

00:32:51.560 - 00:33:04.460

pieces where he would do solo pieces, we do some things together, and I would do some solo pieces. And even my own publisher felt that the music tremendously brought out the poetry, it just calmed the mind, and you're able to hear things

00:33:05.330 - 00:33:15.710

read slowly, and still maintain the thought to hear that long line twisting through a poem the way that say that a Coltrane music was doing a few minutes ago. Morton Marcus: Yeah, that's another thing. I don't want to

00:33:16.310 - 00:33:24.700

interrupt you here. But these poems to you really are like one sinuous line. David Gitin: Exactly. Morton Marcus: And that- that's very interesting to me, because

00:33:24.700 - 00:33:38.410

the way I had read them on my own was that they really were couplets or single lines, which had tremendous space around them. But the way you look at them is as though they're one continuous line, obviously, one continuous poem.

00:33:38.660 - 00:33:51.170

David Gitin: Well, it's like the vertebrae of the spine or the chakras. I mean, I am aware of, certainly of those spaces and pocketing couplets as you say, very consciously, but at the same time, there is this larger form, and larger still, the book

00:33:51.170 - 00:34:03.080

is a poem. I mean, all four poems. I mean, it's just cycles within cycles. It‘s not too intellectual, I don't want to scare anybody away, it's just they- there are different kinds of integrities operating.

00:34:03.890 - 00:34:14.510

Morton Marcus: Very well, I'm gonna go back, and of course, I'm reading them as you read them right now, but I'm gonna go back and read them again with that attitude in mind. I tend to shock my chakras by dividing them, so-

00:34:15.860 - 00:34:23.540

David Gitin: Not, not healthy at all. I noticed you with a Snickers bar over there. Morton Marcus: You're not supposed to say that. David Gitin: Okay.

00:34:24.890 - 00:34:40.340

Let me read the title poem of the book, which is the last poem of the book, it's a poem entitled “Fire Dance“m and it's in three sections, and if the word Earth occurs in all three, and it really is a dance, I mean, if you can think of your

00:34:40.340 - 00:34:57.850

feet pounding the Earth in different ways, this is consciously a statement of being here. FIRE DANCE The day, pierced by the cry of birds, brightens in waves over

00:34:57.880 - 00:35:37.280

Earth's drum. Cave from which I come awakened. Iron snake and the archer mark time on earth, where I spin. Voices around the fire warm to each other. I feel the Earth, move. And you can hear their ending on the word move on the verb, I

00:35:37.280 - 00:35:50.690

mean that was, again deliberate. And if you think of the book beginning with the injunction, the very first word of the of "heart by this picture," you know, the newer work and then ending on "move" or going all the way to the very beginning of

00:35:50.690 - 00:36:05.720

the blessing of beginning with the tree, and then that sense of movement inthe very end. There's a lot of themes I think that recur throughout the book. And the delight of reading it, I mean reading it out loud, and hearing other people or seeing

00:36:05.720 - 00:36:19.040

other people responding, and again in concert so to speak with when Preston and I have been doing these things, it's really been a great pleasure. So the unexpected delight in having the book out there but also seeing these immediate reactions

00:36:19.040 - 00:36:28.870

to the poem. Morton Marcus: Well, you people out there, we will be telling you when this concert reading will be taking place. And you may know some people who are very interested, or even

00:36:28.870 - 00:36:49.180

studying themselves the shakuhachi and just want to hear Preston. And it's just lovely to hear these words sort of springing alive like individual birds, I'm sure, to the music. I'm looking forward to it quite a bit. But meanwhile, we have 16

00:36:49.180 - 00:37:03.820

minutes and we're going to hear more poems by David Gitin. This is again the book “Fire Dance“. David's latest book has been out for around three or four months from Blue Wind Press. David Gitin “Fire Dance“, you should be able to get it at any

00:37:03.820 - 00:37:17.230

bookstore, it's distributed by Book People, so pick up a copy. It's really a beautiful book. David Gitin: Thank you. There's one poem, which was available only in the limited edition of the book “Fire Dance“, the

00:37:17.230 - 00:37:32.950

holograph edition, which is quite more expensive. And this poem was written in on the front page, and this is a poem I wrote about six months ago after I finished the book, and very much related to it still. And we were talking about the process of

00:37:32.950 - 00:37:46.420

writing. Sometimes you finish a poem. Paul Valery, the poet, said that the poem is never finished, only abandoned. And what happens is that sometimes we think we finished a poem and suddenly it says, No, no, and you've got to go and write

00:37:46.420 - 00:38:01.090

another section. So this poem is one short poem right now, but as it turns out, it seems to be the first section of what will be, who knows how long a poem, or how many years it will take to write it. I just feel that that is the case. This is a poem

00:38:01.090 - 00:38:20.510

called: PASSING THROUGH A feather or a knife at the crossroads of memory and desire. This skin of earth and fire, water and air, layer, after

00:38:20.510 - 00:38:35.810

layer in touch with the world. Morton Marcus: You know, there- there's really a sense in these poems and at the center of a- maybe it is the end word of he book, not with a hologram po m, the word "moving," that every

00:38:35.810 - 00:38:49.610

hing is in a state of flu and becoming, and that each poem really is just the mov ment between things. It's not ven- it's as though you don't wa t to freeze things, as most poe s do for the moment. But you wa t to catch the movement and kee

00:38:49.610 - 00:39:06.470

the movement going in the poem hich is almost antithetical to what poetry is, so it's an am zing David Gitin: But one critic said something about one of my earlier books about my capturing the- I forgot exactly how he put

00:39:06.470 - 00:39:16.940

it, but something about an analysis of moments of catching that moment in flight or whatever it is, and after I read that, it seemed appropriate. Morton Marcus: But see what I'm saying, yes, but now I'm saying

00:39:16.940 - 00:39:21.860

you want to fly with a moment. I mean, the moment is flying, it's moving. David Gitin: That's right. Morton Marcus: You know, you don't want to- you don't want

00:39:21.890 - 00:39:33.920

stasis. There's no stasis here. All the words are continuing from the one stanza to another, one poem to another just a- David Gitin: That's right. And- but as you said earlier, they can also be savored in small bites, so you can do those

00:39:33.920 - 00:39:48.920

couplets and you can look at a given section of a poem by itself without any danger. It just says there are these larger integrities that move. I mean, in the sense that people say you're writing one poem all your life or one book. Certainly this

00:39:48.920 - 00:40:04.520

is the- what I've just read, it's been, what, the last 10 years worth of work in 45 minutes or so. You were talking earlier about poems being literal or figurative, or sometimes harder to get, if people are wondering how to get

00:40:04.520 - 00:40:20.570

to them. I'd like to read an earlier poem. This is available in that other book, “This Once“ and it was written 20 years ago and the poem is simply called “Table“. And literally, at the time that I wrote, it was exactly what was on it, a coffee

00:40:20.570 - 00:40:33.770

table in front of me, in my house. At the same time, once you write down these literal things they take on an astounding, metaphorical or symbolic value sometimes. Charles Olson used to say that he thought that the historians

00:40:33.770 - 00:40:42.540

like Francis Parkman, were actually better poets and many of the contemporary poets of his age. Morton Marcus: What? Why did he say that? David Gitin: Because the literalist- literariness itself

00:40:42.540 - 00:40:54.510

sometimes is extraordinary. I mean, it's not like you're making up something but you find that moment, you find that thing, you see clearly at a given point, and that the literal statement sometimes is just more remarkable than

00:40:54.510 - 00:41:11.080

anything the mind can devise. Anyway, in my case, it‘s least true of this poem is called: TABLE Carved pumpkin, Mexican bowl full of nuts, gourd from Peru,

00:41:12.340 - 00:41:38.110

rings burned from the bare peak to the pilgrims at the base. White and black beans to play Go, air plant, world Atlas. Morton Marcus: Yeah. Yeah, that's- that's that's very nice and I- you know, I'm sorry in some ways we didn't start off

00:41:38.260 - 00:41:54.190

with that because that is the making the- the taking out of connections in the literalness that really are rest of the poems. You know, and to see where- where this started that's that- that's very interesting you know?

00:41:55.150 - 00:42:08.860

David Gitin: You'd mentioned Haiku earlier, although in fact at some point, I certainly had tried consciously to write them in the syllables and so forth. I now, I discontinued that, but the influence of it was certainly there and of course

00:42:08.860 - 00:42:26.140

trying to find the American voice or spirit or consciousness as well. And an experience I'd had kind of a mystical or overpowering feeling, I suppose, once in my years of hitchhiking, stayed with me, and I wrote this one down about, also about 20

00:42:26.140 - 00:42:37.240

years ago, and this was one that the poet Lorenzo Thomas had used in his Poetry in the Schools Project in Texas and found that the children loved it. So again, you don't know where- where these things go.

00:42:37.960 - 00:42:57.790

Red tail lights, passing cars, North Star, there, among the weeds. You know, and- and, you know, at one level, almost, philosophically, you could speak of it phenomenologically just

00:42:57.790 - 00:43:10.000

the equivalence of these things, the red lights of a car, the North Star, the weeds, being there to- to link these events like you were just saying a moment ago. At the same time, you know, it's just four lines.

00:43:12.040 - 00:43:23.980

Morton Marcus: You know, um, you make the connections but this is of course the connection with a with Asian posies- poetry, especially Japanese poetry, you make the connections. David Gitin: I'd like to read a longer one since, as we've

00:43:23.980 - 00:43:37.510

talked about, it's a little bit tough sometimes to hear these short ones and move from one to another. This is a poem that is probably the one that's been most translated of mine. I mean, it's been in several languages and

00:43:39.340 - 00:43:49.160

over the period of years it seems to have held up. It's called: MARCH WIND No Robin at hand, but a western meadowlark in the clump of weeds

00:43:49.460 - 00:44:16.520

to be our garden. I burn the trash, the match set carefully the pack exploded Friday whe the poet said Faust(?) Cosmic ircuit and blackletters on the desk, the space heater glows n the porch. The dark absolute ight. What do I see? The

00:44:17.090 - 00:44:45.200

moon, blackness, myself starin back in the window. I do not fe r the unknown, unknowing ut for shadows I name, captiv to the vanity I diffuse. So ma y stars give audience. Books I t rned to again, again, to read wh t? "A Nest of Ninnies," "Te

00:44:45.200 - 00:45:18.020

hnicians of the Sacred, or The White Goddess," "Epitaphs f Our Times," "Gringos and Other Stories," Outside, islands of elf, challenged, never to be nside, more skins than one, subj ct to the unrelenting wind

00:45:13.900 - 00:45:27.680

Morton Marcus: Very nice. David Gitin: So that's, that's an example of a longer, more- work. And ironically, in actual writing time, I would say that that one went a lot faster than some of the shorter ones that

00:45:27.680 - 00:45:36.440

you've heard. Morton Marcus: Okay, so let me ask you about that. On the shorter poems, do you find that you're taking out a lot? Or is it just- now that your work, your sensibility is such that

00:45:36.440 - 00:45:49.020

you really are doing the editing almost in your head before the lines come out? David Gitin: I suspect that that's true. I mean, certainly, there's, there's a lot less fat in the sense to deal with. But

00:45:49.020 - 00:46:06.720

there are times when I'll write a poem, or in another direction, you might say, which these days doesn't work out very well. I mean, the kinds of concerns that I have in poetry now seem to be demanding of me that I stay with these various pursuits. And so

00:46:06.720 - 00:46:20.970

when I want to write a lighter poem, or maybe a more social poem or an anecdotal poem of some kind, although I used to, I can't anymore because it's almost as if I'm in the process of writing a poem, it's not that they're all separate poem, like

00:46:21.000 - 00:46:34.980

today's poem, and tomorrow's poem, and yesterday's poem. So these linkages that we've been talking about really kind of pushed me into the directions that I'm in now. And then perhaps the poems are a little bit wiser, or more advanced than

00:46:34.980 - 00:46:44.370

I am, and I grow into them. I mean, they're kind of sneak previews of the states. And then- Morton Marcus: Well, it's interesting that the word "moving" isn't at the end of that last old poem, but the word

00:46:44.370 - 00:46:50.040

"winds" are David Gitin: Yeah Morton Marcus: So you see, it's- the flux continues. David Gitin: Yes, for sure.

00:46:50.130 - 00:47:01.890

Morton Marcus: The beat goes on. David Gitin: See if I have something a little bit different. We were talking earlier about what- how people sometimes feel

00:47:01.920 - 00:47:16.020

stopped in their poems or writer's block or various elements like that. Here's a poem I wrote when I used to work at Greyhound, loading and unloading buses in San Francisco.

00:47:16.140 - 00:47:24.780

Morton Marcus: This is one of your better jobs. David Gitin: Well, better paying jobs. Morton Marcus: Actually, there are so many people. I was just mentioning, Joe actually worked at Greyhound, my confrere on the

00:47:24.780 - 00:47:36.870

show, and so many people actually have, have some connection with- with that bus line. David Gitin: Well, at that particular terminal in San Francisco, my predecessors were Allen Ginsburg, who wrote a poem

00:47:36.870 - 00:47:44.270

in his first book “Howl“ Morton Marcus: Hmm. David Gitin: I mean his first published book "Howl"- at that station, and they [unidentified] Bobby Hutcherson had worked at

00:47:44.270 - 00:48:00.170

that station, and playwright Ed Bowens, all of them I know so it's, it was very strange. Interestingly enough, when I posted Ginsburg's poem on the locker room wall for the guys who work there, the bosses knew immediately somehow that was

00:48:00.170 - 00:48:08.030

seditious and pulled it down. Yeah, so here's something a little bit different from what we've been hearing. This is simply called: GREYHOUND BLUES

00:48:09.020 - 00:48:32.150

In the belly of a Greyhound bus, I press for silence. Diesel fog paints winos, travelers anxious in summer heat. Baggage carts tumble in the alley, curses are heard. Two others will last the year, our names graffiti, in the company job, and stealing a

00:48:32.150 - 00:48:44.900

break, I ask Mary the Greek for another cup of coffee taxed at a transit union. Morton Marcus: Yeah, but even in these everything's pared down, you know?

00:48:45.110 - 00:48:52.460

David Gitin: Well that mean- Morton Marcus: Well even- even comparing this to Ginsburg, it's really pared down. David Gitin: Sure, it is and certainly “transit“ instead of

00:48:52.460 - 00:49:01.880

the word “move“ is there, and I'm punning on that. Morton Marcus: Now I've got to noticing this, right? David Gitin: No, no, no, actually, I was aware of that. I mean, there's another person In the same book called “Transit

00:49:01.910 - 00:49:14.270

Number Three“, I wrote a series of poems that were just in a different diction, you could say, working on the same territory. Morton Marcus: Well, we've got- Actually, we got time for

00:49:14.270 - 00:49:29.540

probably one more of those, and then a sign off poem, some poem that you want to end on, which would be great. David Gitin: Okay, well, let's- Let me try this one.

00:49:29.000 - 00:49:52.580

This was a poem found, you could say in the speech of someone that I worked with back in tho e days at Greyhound. And part f writing as we spoken of is o hear, hear the way people u e language to- and to hear wh t people are telling us in the

00:49:52.580 - 00:50:01.280

r speech. And sometimes it's t e rhythm of the gaps in th LARRY‘S SONG t speech, which really underli e or underscore what someone s saying, so I call this o

00:50:02.690 - 00:50:19.320

Again from, "Greyhound" Wife's creole, long hair down to here. I wouldn't let her cut it. Now it's white, falling out, but snow white. You understand? My wife.

00:50:24.300 - 00:50:51.170

Morton Marcus: One more or-? David Gitin: What about a little-? Yeah, let's do this one. This is a poem I wrote in- after one of the major psychedelic

00:50:51.350 - 00:51:22.160

rock fests of the 60s, called THE NEWER BEACH ROCK FESTIVAL Electric grace note, circles in sand, night, sea, occasional fires, flesh all form, voices. Morton Marcus: That's a good one to end on, especially with the

00:51:22.160 - 00:51:40.460

word "voices". We have been talking with David Gitin, who has graced us with his time and read his many poems, but also his latest book "Fire Dance", which will be available in any bookstore you go into because the distributor's right out

00:51:40.460 - 00:51:57.890

here. I'd like to say that it's been a pleasure having him and I look forward to the concert that he will be giving with Preston Hauser, the shakuhachi player at Cabrio in April and we'll be telling you more about that. Thanks so much for coming.

00:51:57.980 - 00:52:09.020

David Gitin: Thanks very much for inviting me. I enjoyed it. Morton Marcus: Great. I'd like to say the KUSP thanks Stapleton's Grocery for providing a grant to help make this program possible. Stapleton's Grocery specializes

00:52:09.020 - 00:52:27.800

in organic produce and unadulterated comestibles in the Farmers Exchange building in Santa Cruz. Next week Joe Stroud will be here and we will begin a month long series of programs honoring Black history. And next week Joe will be featuring the

00:52:27.800 - 00:52:41.870

wonderful poet Etheridge Knight, who after being wounded while serving in the Korean War, became addicted to painkillers, and odyssey of drug addiction, armed robberies and years spent in prison followed. While in prison, Knight became a

00:52:41.870 - 00:52:55.820

storyteller and poet describing the lives, personalities and overall plight of his imprisoned black brothers. Now he is recognized as a leading American poet, and tonight you'll discover his warmth, humor and compassion in Joe Stroud's

00:52:55.820 - 00:53:13.070

recording of a recent reading by Etheridge several years ago in San Jose. So that will begin Black History Month. I'll be back with you two weeks from now. Right now stay tuned for “Out Front Out Back“ with Mr. Lawrence blood but Mr. Blood is

00:53:13.070 - 00:53:25.880

not here today- is it? Is he? Pete‘s doing- Pete- Pete's doing it, Pete- Pete Falco. So be sure that you keep tuned in. This is Mort Marcus and I'll see you in two weeks.