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END - STAGE Vol 09_10 Poems

by Steve Gordon - Darcy Kitching

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1.
2.
Dialogue 01:04
3.
4.
The Wait 02:41
5.
6.
Surrealism 02:05
7.
8.
1972-92 02:03
9.
10.

about

Back in 1992, I was a 19-year-old English major at the University of Colorado, Denver, working at a coffee shop called Brio on the 16th Street Mall. The owners of Brio – a couple from Vancouver, BC – built their business on an Italian aesthetic: clean lines, good coffee, no sitting around. It made me feel chic – as if I lived in a bigger city with a faster pace. The European style appealed to Steve Gordon, too. He became a regular customer who tended to linger, in direct defiance of the shop’s design.

As we got to know each other, Steve and I shared ideas and works in progress. He always came into Brio with a bouquet of roses for me, and I gave him poems. Like so many young English majors, I wrote lots and lots of poems – most of them overwrought, angst-ridden and meaningless. But I worked on one prose poem for a long time, through several versions, and arrived at something I felt pretty good about. I gave it to Steve.

One day, he told me he had something for me. He said it was large and that I had to pick it up from his mother’s house. I don’t remember what I thought it might be, but I trusted Steve, so I dutifully drove my Subaru wagon to the prescribed address. When I walked in the door of the house, the seven-foot, three-layer metal sculpture in the middle of the living room didn’t even register in my consciousness. It took a few minutes before I understood that he had made it for me, based on my long, winding prose poem about a woman who is consumed by a machine of her own making. Steve was clearly my biggest fan.

Everyone needs a staunch supporter – a friend, a fan, a champion of our capacity to create something of value in this life. Steve has been that person for me. He didn’t just build that sizable sculpture – which I still treasure – based on my writing. He crafted an entire exhibition around my work in 1995, the year I moved to Portland, Oregon. He continued to make and send me art inspired by my work, including a painting that integrated a phrase from one of the poems on this recording, “Guilt and Free Speech.”

We lost touch now and then over the years. I suffered through grad school and Steve started making music. We don’t know much about each other’s experience over the past 10 or 15 years. We both nursed our mothers through their final days, and we stayed connected as we could. When I learned of Steve’s diagnosis, I wanted to make sure he knew just how much his friendship, support and generosity had meant to me over the years. This recording is part of my expression of gratitude for all Steve is and all he has been for me.

The 10 poems recorded here are from a collection I gave Steve in 1993. Even 25 years later, he can still recite from memory some of the lines he likes. It’s easy for me to dismiss these as immature juvenilia, but I can also appreciate them as an authentic expression of myself that brought me closer to at least one other human being. I hope you enjoy this playful reading and improv session. I did, and I am so grateful to Steve for the opportunity to reconnect with that young woman who just wanted to be seen – and was fortunate enough to have that wish granted.

credits

released April 21, 2018

Steve Gordon
Electric Violin - Tracks 01, 02, 03
Lap steel guitar - 04, 05, 06, 07, 08
Acoustic Laptop - 09, 10


All poems written and performed by Darcy Kitching

Cover Design - Kurt Bauer
Cover Photos - Reed Weimer

C&P 2018 Bangsnap Records
C&P 2018 Darcy Kitching

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