Mark Turpin

Mark Turpin is an American poet.

Life

He is the son of a Presbyterian minister. He has spent 25 years working construction and building houses. He graduated from Boston University at age 47, with a Masters Degree.

He lives and works in Berkeley, California.

His work has appeared in The Paris Review,^[1] The Threepenny Review,^[2] Ploughshares,^[3] and Slate.

Awards

• 1997 Whiting Writers' Award
• 2004 Ploughshares John C. Zacharis First Book Award for Hammer

Works

• "Jobsite Wind", Slate
• "Waiting for Lumber", Slate, July 16, 2002
• "The Furrow", Tarpaulin Sky, Winter 2002
• "The Box"; "Pickwork"; "Shithouse"; "In Winter"; "Will Turpin b. 1987"; "Photograph From Antietam", Boston Review, 19.1
• "The Box", Online News Hour, September 2, 2002

• Hammer. Sarabande Books. 2003. ISBN 9781889330860. http://books.google.com/?id=Y7S8JC8wPhQC&pg=PT1&lpg=PT1&dq=Mark+Turpin+poet&q=Mark%20Turpin%20poet. 
• Susan Aizenberg, Mark Turpin, Suzanne Qualls (1997). Take three 2. Graywolf Press. ISBN 9781555972547. 

Ploughshares^{[dead link]}

• "Before Groundbreak". Ploughshares. Winter 1992-93. http://www.pshares.org/issues/article.cfm?prmArticleID=3380. ^{[dead link]}
• "Photograph From Antietam". Ploughshares. Winter 1992-93. http://www.pshares.org/issues/article.cfm?prmArticleID=3379. ^{[dead link]}

Reviews

"Dear god / one needs to be an expert now," according to one in "A Carpenter's Body" from Mark Turpin's debut collection, Hammer. That explicit need—for intuitive expertise, for intimate knowledge, for skill which ennobles human activity—is central to the author's poetics, and appears to be his answer to Stevens' charge that the modern poem find what will suffice; this is an engaging, lucid and textured book, and one whose novelty (Turpin himself is a carpenter by trade) is far outweighed by its ambition.^[4]

References

1. ^ http://www.theparisreview.org/printissue.php/prmIID/105
2. ^ http://www.threepennyreview.com/tocs/88_w02.html
3. ^ http://www.pshares.org/authors/author-detail.cfm?authorID=1558
4. ^ "Hammer Mark Turpin reviewed by John Casteen", Electronic Poetry Review, September 2003

External links

• "Author's website"
• Tony R. Rodriguez (October 6, 2008). "Mark Turpin: A Conversation With A Poetic Worker". East Bay Literary Examiner. http://www.examiner.com/x-706-East-Bay-Literary-Examiner~y2008m10d6-Mark-Turpin-A-Conversation-With-A-Poetic-Worker. 

Persondata
Name	Turpin, Mark
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth
Place of birth
Date of death
Place of death