It’s heartbreaking. To lose a master poet, certainly. To lose a cherished
friend, more so. Steve Kowit no longer walks among us, but he is immortalized in
his work. We have that. We can enjoy his wit and hear his voice, feel his passion...
his compassion... sense the shifts in humor through his tone, view our world through
the light and lens of his imagery. We—the collective We—have that.
I’m distressed to discover that I took him for granted. Time and distance
dull incentive and motivation to keep in touch with someone who should always be
there. A ruthless email inbox cleaner, I discovered last night that I didn’t
save a single personal note from Steve. Desperately, I searched all of my email
folders and came up empty-handed. You know what I saved? The business notes. Notes
filled with details of his upcoming readings at the college where I teach. Notes
that strategized his visits to my creative writing classes to discuss his poetry
with my students. Notes about essays he wanted me to consider for SHJ. Notes that
are perfunctory and to the point...well, as perfunctory and to the point as Steve
was capable of being, like this note about his fee for reading at the college:
Ricki—as long as you pay me my minimum fee of $26,000 it will be okay. I know
that as soon as I go public with the photos of my sizzling affair with Tiger Woods
(yes, he swings both ways), my asking fee will more than triple. So you’re
getting in under the wire!
And even though I can hear his voice in those notes, most of them lack the easy
back and forth banter and teasing I’d find in Steve’s personal notes
to me—sweet notes between friends talking about Blackwater in Steve’s
backyard and his animals and my animals and retirement and health and... and...
and... and... I can’t remember what all else. There are none of the notes that
included funny or touching animal videos we’d share with one another, the first
one being the “Christian the Lion” video which made both of us cry:
Two men
and a lion
I’m heartbroken those emails are gone, that I didn’t take care of them,
that they are lost through thoughtless acts of efficiency...deleting nonessential
emails. How could I do that? How could I choose to hang on to all of the notes related
to business and toss those precious notes written just for me?
So, this morning I went to our “Friends” bookcase in the entryway of
our home and gathered every single Steve Kowit book we own (which is all of them),
knowing I would find personal notes inscribed for Duff and for me, remembering—as
I picked out In the Palm of Your Hand, The Maverick Poets, Lurid Confessions, The
Dumbbell Nebula, The First Noble Truth, The Gods of Rapture, Greatest Hits 1978–2003,
Crossing Borders, and Everything is Okay—Steve sitting at
our dining room table, with Duff and friend Clyde Fixmer, after his last reading
at the college, eating Eggplant Parmesan and inscribing the stack of books for us
with notes like:
Can I buy this book back from you? I know it’s worth lots of money!! ;-)
(In an Uncorrected Proof of In the Palm of Your Hand)
AND
I don’t want you guys laughing at my poetry! Hugs & Kisses!!! Steve
(in Lurid Confessions)
Non-fiction editor at Serving House: A Journal of Literary Arts, R. A.
Rycraft has published stories, poems, essays, reviews, and interviews in a number
of journals and anthologies, including The Book of Worst Meals: 25 Authors Write
about Terrible Culinary Experiences (Serving House Books, 2010), Runnin’
Around: The Serving House Book of Infidelity (Serving House Books, 2014), Pif
Magazine, VerbSap, Perigee, The MacGuffin, Calyx, Contemporary World Literature, Del Sol
Review, and The Absinthe Literary Review.
Her collection of short stories, You Know, is a Web del Sol World
Voices chapbook. Winner of the Eric Hoffer Best New Writing Editor’s Choice
Award for 2008, Finalist for the Poets & Writers East/West Competition for
2010, and a Special Mention for the 2010 Pushcart Prize, Rycraft is chair of the
English department and Coordinator of the Visiting Writers Series at Mt. San Jacinto
College in Menifee, California. She is also co-editor of the Serving House Books
anthology Winter Tales II: Women on the Art of Aging (2012).