Steve Kowit at San Diego Writers, Ink 2014
By Steve Kowit
A message from the SDFP editors: Last year we kicked off National Poetry Month with a selection of works by San Diego poets. Steve Kowit was one of those poets. We are deeply saddened to learn of his death. The encomiums that he deserves and the extensive remembrances of his life as a poet, essayist and educator will be forthcoming. But at this moment, in this place, we remember Steve’s poetry and what he had to say about poetry making.
Poetry, when it is at its most ineffable, transports us to places we had no reason to believe language could take us. What is needed for this task is the most luminous vision, the most receptive spirit and the most crystalline possible clarity of presentation. …
Let us, by all means, have a poetry of the most incandescent verbal pyrotechnics, of the most restlessly experimental and original design. Let us have poems that astonish the reader at every turn. Let our poets attend to making it new with nearly as much fervor as they attend to making it true. But on those occasions when we fail to communicate, let us no longer imagine we have succeeded at something larger and grander.
Let us not blame our failures on the intellectual poverty of our readers, or on their inability to register complex ambiguities, or on their irritable reaching after fact, or on the ineptitude of their teachers, or on the seductions of the media, or on crass materialism, or on the philistine vulgarity of our culture, or on–well, whatever else seems convenient to blame for our own failures.
Let us no longer be gulled into imagining that rhetorical sophistication and verbal panache in the absence of genuine, communicated perception can create a poetry that is genuinely complex, textured, multilayered, exploratory, intuitive and profoundly insightful, a poetry worth careful study. (The Mystique of the Difficult Poem)
Steve’s poems reflected that “luminous vision.” He astonished us, enabled us to both imagine and to see the landscape before us. Above all, he respected his readers. It is fitting that we should give him the last word here.
Last Will
If I am ever
unlucky enough to die
(God forbid!)
I would like to be propped up
in my orange overstuffed chair
with my legs crossed
dressed in a cashmere sweater & jeans
& embalmed
in a permanent glaze
like a donut
or Lenin
a small bronze plaque
on the door of my study
showing the dates
of my incarnation & death.
& leave the room as it was!
Let nothing be touched in the house!
My underpants stuck on the doorknob
just where I left them.
My dental floss
lying on top of the Bhagavad Gita
next to my socks.
Let the whole of Ebers Street
be roped off
& planted with yews
from Narragansett to Cape May
& left as a monument to my passing.
The street?
No— the city itself?
Henceforth
Let it be known
as the Steve M. Kowit
Memorial Park & Museum.
Better yet
if the thing can be done
without too much fuss
put the whole planet to sleep.
Let the pigeons & busses
& lawyers & ladies
hanging out wash
freeze in their tracks.
Let the whole thing
be preserved under ice
just as it looked
when the last bit of drool
trickled over my chin.
Let the last of the galaxies
sizzle out
like a match in the wind
& the cosmic balloon
shrink down to a noodle
& screech to a halt.
Let time clot
like a pinprick of blood
& the great solar flame
flicker down
to the size of a yertzite candle
leaving the universe dark
but for one tiny spotlight
trained on the figure of me
propped in my chair—
for after my death
what possible reason could life
in any form
care to exist?
—Don’t you see
it would be utterly pointless!
I would be gone!
Look, try to conceive it,
a world without me! Me
entirely absent—
nobody here with these eyes,
this name,
these teeth!
Nothing but vacant space
a dry sucking wind
where I walked
where I sat— where
you used to see me
you would see nothing at all—
I tell you
it dwarfs the imagination…
Oh yes, one last thing:
the right leg
is to be crossed over the left
— I prefer it that way —
& poised on the knee .
Prop the left elbow up
on the arm of the chair
with a pen
in my right hand—
let my left
be characteristically
scratching my skull
or pulling my hair.
If you wish
close the lids of my eyes
but whatever you do
the mouth must remain open
just as it was in life—
yes
open forever!
On that I absolutely insist!
Copyright Steve Kowit
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Aw man, so sorry to hear. :(
Erin, I remember Steve being at your grandmother Loverne Brown’s side when she received the LOLA award from the library for her poetry. It was touching to see the two of them together, the unspoken bond between them. Steve always offered support to his fellow poets and took joy in their accolades.
We in Barrio Logan last night paid homage to Steve Kowit at Poetic Libations.
Isn’t it strange how people can be so well put together they’re capable
of writing at Steve Kowit’s level and then they sort of die?
Y’mean he’s not really dead, only sorta…. How poetic.
I am deeply saddened to hear this. Steve was largely responsible for starting and mentoring the San Diego poetry community. His teachings were brilliant, heart wrenching, and sheer joy! He is a tremendous loss to the poetry world. I loved him dearly. For all of us I know that his mouth will remain open forever!!
Carol Archibald
He will be missed but his poetry is with us, in us, for us.
That voice —- Brooklyn born and full of passion —- that voice is twirling around in my head as I read his poems. He gave to all of his students, to his poetry, to his family and friends so beautifully, with kindness for the human and non-human conditions.I’m breaking up inside.
Can someone please provide a report of Kowit’s death. I can’t find any mention of it.
Thanks!
Heart attack. Died in his sleep.
For years Steve Kowit reviewed poetry for the (now defunct) Union-Tribune Books section. He was a good poet and a good man. And he never missed a deadline.
Farewell to a dear man and a wonderful poet.
This is such sad news. Steve was a brilliant poet and a kind, gentle man. The man and his creative, amusing, pertinent Voice will be missed.
I have read at least one of Steve’s poems a day for the last three years. His poems have helped keep me in touch with what’s real. I will continue to read them. His heart will continue to speak to me.
I was sad to wake up to the news of Steve’s death. My condolences to his family. I think I shall remain in denial about his passing. To me he will always be hiking up a mountain in San Diego’s backcountry gathering sagebrush for his next poem.
I did not think I would be so heartbroken to hear about the death of this great man and poet. I had not written poetry until I took his class at Southwestern College. Steve Kowit was a nurturing and inspiring teacher who gave me confidence and introduced me to a wonderful world of new poets. His love for his wife, his animals, and nature permeated his life and his teaching. His classes, often peppered with political outbursts, were the high point of my week. I have a vivid image of him arriving to class, wearing a baggy sweater, and foraging through his bulging backpack for his notes and the transparencies he had made of our poems. His papers were not well organized but his mind was crisp and he inspired the hell out of us, night students.
He was a life-changing teacher. Thankfully, his books live on.
We needed more Steve Kowits, not fewer! Oh Steve! You live on forever! I have your recently sent poems and broadsides right here on my desk – your advocacy for justice, your unflinching bravery, your sharp and clear honesty – strengthened us all. Gave us courage! Booted us into action! We need to work twice as hard now and in your beautiful memory, always.
I am utterly sad to get this news.
With deepest respect and remembrance –
I thought we would have Steve Kowit around for a couple of decades – to listen to and enjoy. I am so glad to have known Steve for many years as an activist. Then a year ago he read his poems with Eleanor Antin for the exhibit “Labor Migrant Gulf” at Southwestern College. He was physical, challenging, pedagogical, outrageous, funny, and right on. I will cherish that memory for the rest of my life. Here is to you, Steve. So grateful to have crossed your path. And so grateful for all that you have done in your writings – especially the recent ones – for rights of Palestinians and a humane vision of the Middle East. A true humanitarian and a fully realized human being.
Steve! How can this be? A world without you in it, not so! Your force lives on, in all your poems, and in all of our hearts, dear Steve, your activism, your humor, your wisdom, your gifts to us all.
We were lucky to have Steve as a colleague out at Southwestern. His poetry and his activism brought light and passion to the campus and to teachers like me! As Ernie mentioned, his poetry is in us and with us!
I am beyond devastated at the news of Steve’s death. I loved and respected him as both poet and friend. He was and will continue to be one of the most important voices of this century and the last. Of course he was the most marvelous teacher, generous in every way.
A gentleman and a scholar who brought peace and understanding to many. RIP my friend.
a poet’s sun set
one red feather in the breeze
spirit of winter
——————————————–
Any soul that drank the nectar of your passion was lifted.
From that water of life he is in a state of elation.
Death came, smelled me, and sensed your fragrance instead.
From then on, death lost all hope of me. -Rumi
A man of goodness and grace. Aloha, haku mele Steve Kowit, aloha…
We will always hold you in the palms of
our hands. Sigh
I send my warmest condolences to Steve Kowit’s family. Steve was one of my poetry heroes. I am grateful to have known and loved him. Over the years, when he signed the bottom of his letters and books with the word, “hugs,” he meant it. In 1981, when he operated “Gorilla Press”, he published a broadside of one of his own poems, the beautiful and powerful, “They Are Looking for Che Guevara.” It remains for me one of the most influential poems of my generation. Today, I read this poem and find I am looking for Steve Kowit in every word. Thank you, Steve. Hugs.
Steve Kowit. From the heyday of the East Village and beyond today – what about his book of poetry being released from U Tampa? This obit is taxing me. I had wanted to hear him read from that book. His casual and professional both words linger. Fuck You, Steve: a Man of the Arts.