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I'm sorry to have to share this very sad news with our members. David will be sorely missed by his many fans and friends here and around the world.

The following is from another site, posted by Gloria Avner, who also is the artist responsible for the lovely portrait of David. Sincere condolences to Gloria and David's family.

___________________


Gloria Avner here. Nearly six years ago, David Gitin and I restarted a relationship begun as teens. It survived a 42 year hiatus. Yes, it's a a good story. I am sorry to tell you, dear poets, musicians, artists, students, old friends of David's, that he left us last night. The Gary Peacock Trio took him to the stars. The best news is that he is free from pain now and was able to reunite with his beautiful daughter and granddaughter after 5 years away in his last 5 days. He rallied when he saw Diana Victoria Lal and Nico Wilbur, these two shining beings, and his face lit with love. Know that he put together that last book (with the help of gifted and generous George Mattingly) with the intent that it be a gift for you. Rest in peace, David. We miss you already.

I only met David a handful of times when he lived in the Bay Area, but he was always extremely nice and a great conversationalist. I'm sorry to hear of his passing. I know he will be missed by his many friends.

Oh no... really sorry to hear. I thought he was getting better. Meeting and hanging out with David was a delight. He lived life to the fullest, eating up life in big bites, but a very gentle soul all the same. A fantastic poet/writer and one of the few true omnivores musically, he was on my side rooting for the Grateful Dead, Keith Jarret and Peter Brötzmann all at once. I remember our dim-sum debauchery in Vancouver during the jazz festival about 10 -12 years ago quite fondly. Truly a sweet man... will be greatly missed.
Farewell, David... Not Fade Away!

David was an all around good man. The one time I spent a few hours with him in NYC is a very nice memory for me. RIP - Sir!

I too had great dialogue with David in cyberspace and once during a trip to the Monterey Peninsula, many years ago, after Passing Through was published. Thanks for contributing to my life and, now, inspiring me to think about my own legacy.

Adding my respects. RIP.

so sad.

His contributions were huge. I didn't meet him, but I feel that I knew him.

From Gloria Avner's Facebook timeline:

"David may be gone but he is not forgotten. A lovely tribute appears in this week's letters to the editor of our local Keys newspaper, The Reporter. Better I think than an obit, dear west coast and music friends of David:" - Gloria Avner




Full text and photo follows.

The passing of a poet

Keynoter Publishing
July 10, 2015



It is with a numbed sense of great personal loss that I report the passing on June 27th of David Gitin: poet, educator and polymath. As Gloria Avner lovingly phrased it (his long-lost teenage sweetheart, re-discovered and re-united in Key Largo six years ago), “he has finally graduated from Earth school.”

It is never easy to get to know the complex and extremely gifted. Those who reached out received warmth back they might never have imagined. Those wise or fortunate enough to have probed his vast cabinet of knowledge emerged richer and deeper and often agog at his intimacy with the intertwined arms of all the creative arts.

No one loved or pursued the depths of film and music more passionately than David. He was internationally renowned as one of the last of the post-beat-generation poets.

Though he ended up teaching much of his adult life, most recently as chair of a Humanities Department at Monterey Peninsula College in California, his journey to poetry began with a restless and unlimited imagination, plus an innate allergy to conventional pedagogic inanities, which put him on the road at a very young age.

Something led him to Greenwich Village in the late ‘50s when it was the epicenter of American ideas and, led by the arts, fairly erupting with the seeds of a coming American sensibility.

He sat in cafes and bars with others of geothermal creativity and rejection of grayness — poets and novelists and musicians and composers and filmmakers and painters — and found his place among them. His work ended up in the same pantheon as, and considered fully peer to, that of the indelible, iconic figures of modern American poetry. As a teacher, his long memory and insistence on finding and unlocking the wellspring of every student is reflected in the many notes Gloria has received, from around the world, offering love and gratitude for what David taught them and the vibrant legacy he left them.

Gloria wants to thank the entire Upper Keys Community and particularly the Keys Jewish Community Center where he served on the board as chair of the Scholarship Committee, for welcoming David into the fold. She offers special thank yous to those who hosted his daughter Diana Victoria Lal and granddaughter Nico when they flew in to say goodbye from Washington state, to the care-givers of VNA/Hospice of the Florida Keys, to those who visited David in the Plantation Key Nursing Center, to his doctors, Bernard Ginsberg and Joanne Mahoney, and to the many who offered Gloria rides so she could be with him at will.

Rest in peace, David. Say hello to Shakespeare and Yeats, Eisenstein and John Coltrane, Miles Davis and, of course, to Frank.

Your friend and admirer,

Sam Vinicur,

President,

Keys Jewish Community Center

Key Largo


Source

Nice piece.
Thanks for posting, Ron.

Indeed. Thanks, Ron.

Thanks from me too, Ron.

This is David's new book (and Gloria Avner's cover art)---



---but I don't know how to acquire it or whether it's still available to the public. Maybe that info. will be posted somewhere eventually.

Blue Wind Press has a Facebook timeline that contains several recent posts about David and Gloria.



Jimmy C. and June (hornplayer) probably met David while attending a hang in NYC that I attended too. David and I stayed at the same hotel; when I broke my glasses and needed to get them fixed, he unflinchingly spent a lot of "free" time guiding me around and otherwise helping me cope. (On one tiny occasion, I was able to help him in turn.)

Besides noting that sustained kindness, I'd echo Cem's eloquent praise for David (within the limits of my knowledge)---

Cem wrote:Meeting and hanging out with David was a delight. He lived life to the fullest, eating up life in big bites, but a very gentle soul all the same. A fantastic poet/writer and one of the few true omnivores musically. . . . Truly a sweet man.

And it's odd what one remembers vividly, but when some of the NYC "hangers" were exchanging farewell hugs, David led right into a "hippie"/"freak" hug such as I hadn't experienced in decades (I don't know how to explain what that is, but I was delighted).

We communicated a few times over the years, and each time I was relieved that although some ailments had been giving him trouble, a life-threatening condition hadn't been.   

R.I.P., David Gitin. May memories and thoughts of you be a blessing to us (as they already are).
  

Thanks to Pete Cherches for discovering this fine tribute to David, from the blog of poet Ron Silliman.

Ron Silliman's Blog



"While Woke Up This Morning must represent the poems David wanted saved, there are in his other books enough great poems to warrant a volume twice that size, possibly more."

The following message, along with some lovely photos, was posted today by Gloria Avner on Facebook.

"This is Gloria writing, dear friends and family of David. At 4:00 pm today the Visiting Nurse Association here in the Upper Keys is hosting a memorial service for those they served in the last year who left us. These women were extraordinarily compassionate, helpful and loving beyond words in our hardest times. I will go to the Garden Club for the ceremony and honor both David and the VNA nurses (he would love being among the flowers. His favorite book as a child was Ferdinand the Bull)."

Thanks, Ron. More nice pictures of David.

Thanks for posting those latest photos, Ron. I especially like the second one.