Sadly, Marvin passed away on November 2, 2014. He lived fully and expressively until he lost consciousness due to a heart attack. He never woke up and he died peacefully a few days later. We wrote the site dedication (below) in early 2011 when he could read it and enjoy it. We’re choosing to keep it largely as we wrote it, with our father still in the present tense. He will always be that way for us. With love,
David Klotz and Dan Kael (Marvin’s sons).
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Marvin’s Voice
Now we call him Pop. When we were kids, the neighbors called him “Big Marv,” so sometimes we did, too. It wasn’t just his commanding physical presence. It was the giant voice.
Pop has always used his booming baritone to great dramatic effect. He could have had a career on the stage. In a way, he did. For 33 years, as an English Professor at CSUN (“Cal State Northridge”), he entertained multitudes of impressionable (sometimes impenetrable) youth with resounding performances of Shakespeare’s most celebrated monologues and sonnets. His “Bible as Literature” class gave him plenty of opportunities to cast himself as the voice of God. As young adults, we witnessed his professorial panache when he invited us to visit his classroom.
Fortunately, we’ve been able to enjoy a lifetime of Pop’s performances at the dinner table. He’s a damn good joke teller. (He loves playing God in jokes, too. He tells the one about Shlomo, who keeps asking God to let him win the lottery. When God finally speaks, Pop downplays it with a hushed but authoritative tone: “Shlomo, meet me half way on this. Buy a ticket.”) When he’s not going for levity, Pop forcefully communicates his opinions on world events and the human condition. Many a dinner has ended with his somber pronouncement, “One more meal closer to death!”
Which leads nicely to a discussion of Pop’s poetic voice.
Those of us who know him well recognize his recurring themes: religion (source of much human misery), politics (source of much human misery – especially the right-wing stuff), and death/aging/decay (the human condition; i.e., misery).
Some of his poems honor friends who hang out with him at the paddle tennis courts; these friends often challenge Pop on his preoccupation with human misery.
Why the dark obsession? Pop became a poet only long after his thick hair (once coal black, then vibrant salt-and-pepper) had turned a pure, flowing, patriarchal white. By then, he had developed a finely tuned bullshit meter, and (we imagine) he could come up with fewer reasons to feign optimism.
After retiring from CSUN in 1992, Pop started a second, successful career as a certified tax preparer, working out of his home office (and demonstrating the sort of admirable career drive that, apparently, skips a generation). For more than ten years, he solved all manner of peculiar tax problems and soothed his clients’ fears of an indecipherable tax code. When that career got too stressful for him a few years ago, he reduced his client list to a handful of friends and family. With time on his hands, seven-plus decades of accumulated wisdom, and a scholarly command of various poetic forms, Pop decided to start writing poems. Perhaps he considered Hillel’s eternal questions, “If not me, who? If not now, when?” To which he might have added, “If not the miserable truth, why bother?”
To be fair, much of Pop’s material encourages us to rise above despair. Pop doesn’t always focus on the world’s ills. Sometimes he finds inspiration in the little things around him. Kitchen appliances, for instance (although the theme often turns out to be obsolescence), or housecats (Pop observes the feline condition with appreciation and some jealousy). Humor keeps the spirit afloat. If proud sons can be permitted to brag a little, Pop‘s autobiographical, scarily funny poem “ER Poetry” was published in a recent humor issue of the poetry journal “Rattle.”
In heavy moods, Pop can view all human endeavor with a jaundiced eye through a murky lens. Science, advertising, even writing poetry – it’s all futility, silliness, and vanity. (As W.S. put it, “A tale told by an idiot….”) However, in lighter moments, he admires the drive and determination of, say, the visionary restaurateurs who offer a range of tasty and surprisingly exotic culinary options to those strolling the southern stretch of the Venice Beach boardwalk. Life’s a feast! Or at least it can be, sometimes.
On occasion, Pop writes about Joan, our wonderful stepmother of more than 40 years. When he does, it’s his most life-affirming stuff, appropriately enough.
One quick comment on form: Pop taught famous sonnets for decades; if he chooses to write in that pre-psychedelic form a bit more often than other contemporary poets, perhaps it’s because he’s respecting the adage, “write what you know.” Same goes for villanelles. And haiku. And some other forms we don’t remember the names for, if we ever learned them.
This website is a gift from us to Pop on his 81st birthday. Big Marv still looms large physically, although time has reduced his frame by an inch or two. (“Cursed decay!” he might write.) His big voice resonates as loudly as ever. Over the past several years, at the end of every month, Pop has distributed the previous month’s poetic output to a handful of relatives and friends. Usually, it’s five or six poems, attached to an email with the subject line, “Sigh.” Sometimes we take him and his work for granted (as children often do). Pursuing this project, we’ve had the chance to review his impressive accumulated verses, and we can’t help thinking, “Egad! Our talented father has written some great poems.”
Please click on “Marvin Reads His Poems,” above, and listen. You can certainly appreciate his material on the page. But to really experience it, you need to hear… the voice!
With love,
David Klotz and Dan Kael (who’s not the first Klotz to change his name)
February 6, 2011
We would also like to acknowledge and thank:
David Ricardo for technical assistance with WordPress
Lori Fagerholm for graphics
Tim Hallinan and Dick Abcarian for their eloquent, amusing testimonials