Mort Marcus, 1936 - 2009

In a piece, a prose poem titled "The Library," my friend Morton Marcus wrote, "When I die I will be a book on a shelf in the library, and this notion doesn't bother me. I look forward to leaning against Melville and Montagine, and I can't wait to stand in the ranks..."

Attended Mort's Memorial at Cabrillo College, Aptos, CA, where he taught for 30 years... profound sense of loss, outpouring of emotion... An extraordinary event and extraordinary, too, was that sense of Mort as impressario, poet as magician... Mort with a magic flute... overseeing it all... it was as if the man was hosting his own funeral and, following that, the wake. In the last weeks of his life, dying of renal cancer, dealing with the pain and the one or two good hours a day left to him he managed to function, he put together the program, invited the various speakers and performers (businessman and long-time friend George Ow, Jr.; historian Sandy Lydon; poet Joe Stroud; novelist Kirby Wilkins... musician John Walther, artist James Aschbacher and writer Lisa Jensen, poets Gary Young and Stephen Kessler, Leonard Gardner and Jack Marshall, California Poet Laureate Al Young and Mark Ong, San Francisco author and book designer...).

The word _gravitas_ comes to mind, that, and bravery, facing one's death and preparing at the same time to mount a celebration. Yeah, Mort had more than the usual amount of vitality and appetite for life... an impressario, he knew how to make an entrance, and he knew how to make a departure.

Mort Marcus - Last Poetry Reading

Left to Right - Robert Sward, Mort Marcus, Gary Young

It seemed an utterly natural thing to do, to be dying of cancer, to have suffered a year or two of agony, and yet to agree to give one last poetry reading. Still, with Mort Marcus you can never be too sure. I wouldn't be surprised if somewhere down the line he managed to do another. And of course he has two new books coming out and, once he has actual copies in hand, they'll need to be properly launched, though he did a decent enough job of reading poems from both and alerting his audience at last night's reading (Tues., Sept. 1, 41st Street Book Cafe, Capitola, CA).

Mort is an impressive storyteller, a teacher and a performer... an actor... and he knows how to make an dramatic entrance and, as he proved at last night's reading , he knows how to make an exit. Yeah, I'm thinking "exit," as in "exit dying..." And he looked good doing it. "Mort looks like he's already gone to heaven," said my wife, a woman not given to exaggeration.

I don't know many people who could carry it off, attracting an overflow audience, and delivering, 'bringing it on home,' reaching deep and giving an all-out reading, a reading answered by a standing ovation... 30 years of teaching in a really good community college, years of hosting what is said to be this country's longest running Poetry Show (KUSP-FM radio), and serving as a film reviewer for radio and TV...

My friend, poet Gary Young said afterward, "Robert, we're lucky to be here, even to have bad luck..."

If you're gonna have bad luck, well, it's better to have bad luck in some places than in others. I somehow left the reading feeling grateful as much as anything else. Grateful for a place that values its writers and artists. .

Wallace Baine in a moving front page tribute to Mort Marcus in the Santa Cruz Sentinel (Aug. 30, 2009), concludes by saying,

"Yet the struggle to maintain his lifestyle in the face of painful treatments has taught him a few things about the emotional strength it takes to face the stiff headwinds of mortal illness. Reflecting on his life-long love of film, Marcus turns to the memorable climactic scene of the classic 1954 film On the Waterfront.

"There's the scene on the waterfront when Lee J. Cobb and his goons get Marlon Brando down in the meeting house there and just beat the hell out of him and leave him there. Karl Malden and Eva Marie Saint jump down in there and say, 'You all right? We got to get you an ambulance.' And Brando says, 'No, no. Just stand me up.' And they lift him up into a standing position, and he says, 'Am I standing?'

"Marcus added, his voice thick with emotion, 'Yeah, I know what that's like.'"