David Gitin

• Name — David D. Gitin • Born — 19 December 1941 • Birthplace — Buffalo, New York • Died — 27 June 2015 • Place of death — Key Largo, Florida • Occupation — Poet • Language — English

Gitin was born in Buffalo, New York on December 19, 1941. He graduated from the State University of New York at Buffalo with a B.A. in 1966; from San Francisco State College with an M.A. in 1971; and did graduate study at the University of Wisconsin in Madison from 1972 to 1973. He lived in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district from 1967 to 1970 where he was part of the Straight Theatre and the cofounder of the Poets' Theatre in 1968. At the I-Thou Coffeehouse, he directed a series of readings by the leading poets of the day while he worked as a counter person. At San Francisco State College (now University), he was a professor at the new Free University of San Francisco. Not making money as a poet he went to work at Greyhound Lines as a baggage clerk from 1968 to 1970. Subsequent jobs included manager of the Full Moon Bookstore, San Francisco, 1971. He held many different jobs, from coffeehouse counter person to postal clerk, social caseworker, record salesperson and library page. After a period in Cotati, California he eventually settled in Monterey, California, working as a jazz disc jockey as well as teaching English at Monterey Peninsula College, Hartnell College and Fort Ord and producing a reading series that included Carl Rakosi, Michael McClure, Ron Silliman, Allan Kornblum, Lorenzo Thomas, Jeanine Pommy Vega, Diane di Prima, Maureen Owen and Bernadette Mayer to name just a few. He also taught at the University of Wisconsin Extension School, Madison in 1971, as professor of English, 1971–74; and at Chapman University, Orange, California, professor of English, 1974. His final teaching position was at Monterey Peninsula College. He was a professor of humanities there from 1974 to 2007. After retirement he moved to Key Largo, Florida to live with his reunited teenage love, Gloria Avner. His work was influenced by the writings and friendship of Allen Ginsberg, Charles Olson, and Robert Creeley before he moved to San Francisco in the mid-60s where he co-founded Poets Theater with Jim Wilson, edited the small press magazine Bricoleur, and produced radio programs for KPFA in Berkeley from 1967 to 1971.

Poet Michael McClure has referred to Gitin as "an obsessed, serious artist who has never lost his light heart and deep passion, and who has been among those of us who have cared since the early sixties" and said that "the surface and tensile qualities of the poems are gorgeous... the refinement of a master". The American Library Association calls Gitin an original and says " he focuses on detail and precise motion of moments" and "looks beyond what is at hand, either within his own sensibility or reflected in time". The Small Press Review says that Gitin is "a master of plugging us into how objects actually relate, on both the micro-scales and the larger integrities that make up 'the world'". Cid Corman wrote to David Gitin "I'm partial to such quietness - where words are allowed to say what the poet has felt in startling upon them. Each word a flame in the bonfire around which night gathers us in the end." A.R. Ammons said "You (Gitin) touch a sort of Zen infinitude." And Carl Rakosi said, "Mr. Gitin understands what is poetically worth observing...the minimum for giving one a lift...and what would be too much." George Oppen said, "assembled 'against the wall' [the poems] spell out, and frequently with brilliant precision, 'what has happened.' "Spare, lyric, and haunting - these poems offer the starkest of silhouettes, the obscurest of shadows. Gitin is not interested in spelling it out. Pay attention, he seems to be saying, listen carefully: much is revealed, in little." Bookpaper, December 1989. "In "This Once" we encounter New York phenomenological report & Objectivist sincerity side by side with what would later be dubbed by Gitin's contemporaries (like friend Silliman) L=A=N=G=U=A=G=U=E writing. For instance, see the incredible "Careens," which places Gitin squarely in the company of Clark Coolidge and Jackson MacLow...Shorter work reminds one of Robert Grenier, Tom Raworth, the later Creeley...Add to that the linguistic grace of a Chinese brush painting...a major voice doing the work that had to be done"