John Gill 1924?1995
For many years John Gill lived the blue and gray and green of Ithaca and Trumansburg. A quarter of a century ago he wrote about himself,
"John Gill was born in Chicago, Ill., in 1924. Lived there during his childhood; raised along the shore of Lake Michigan when you could still swim in it. He did the middle-class thing Ñ went to college and from there into teaching (after sitting in Iceland as a radio operator for 18 months during WWII).
After teaching for about a dozen years, he decided he had no great urge to tell anybody anything. The logical move was to write poetry, edit New: American & Canadian Poetry magazine and publish New/Books from The Crossing Press which he started with friends. This way he could do and say without the teachers' stigma: role-playing within a system."
John, along with Elaine, continued to put energy very successfully into The Crossing Press, founded in the late 1960s and now based in Freedom, California, where the Gills relocated in the mid 1980s. Always John emphasized the importance of getting words into print, especially those voiced by writers who swam against the mainstream.
I remember John best as a poet: his elegant lines of desire and history, his slender frame and intent gaze behind a microphone, his laugh that blended goat and god in a kind of impish wisdom. He was central to the activities of the Ithaca Community Poets in our fourteen years of existence, helping to bring emerging and already famous writers to the public in our area. His own four books, as well as the anthologies of writing he edited, reached numerous readers and listeners. Generously he mentored younger poets. I remember one evening in particular when he and I traveled to Geneva to hear Donald Hall and Robert Bly read together; he was so caught up in talking about poetry, and so eager to get us to the reading, that he whizzed through a 30-mph stretch of road and wound up with a hefty ticket. He shrugged his shoulders, gave his trademark giggle, said "For poetry!" and picked up speed once again to get us to that auditorium on time. That was John: an unconquerable spirit, resilient with humor, even when his body began to fail.
Let us be glad his final years were blessed with daily sunshine and fresh fruits and vegetables and nearby ocean air. I know from his letters he carried Central New York in his heart, but welcomed the change to warmth and greater ease. The world of poetry, the world of publishing, and his many other circles of friends all continue stronger and more free-willed because he moved among us.
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