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 master's degree.
He lives and works in Berkeley, California.
His work has appeared in The Paris Review, The Threepenny Review, Ploughshares, and Slate.

Awards

*
*
*
*
*
"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 is far outweighed by its ambition.