Craft: Malinda Markham
This craft essay was suggested by Mari L’Esperance. If you have a suggestion for a Sharpener craft or writing problems topic please let me know!
Malinda Markham (1968-2012) was a poet who published two books, but never got a chance to find a big readership. Expert at unwinding her subjects and finding magic in her obsessions, Markham’s poems expose and confront the soft frayed edge between desire and fantasy and physical immediacy.
Markham had an Ph.D. from the University of Denver and an MFA from the University of Iowa, and taught at Daito Bunka University in Tokyo. Many of the cultural sites and nexus of core images come from her time living in Japan.
Her two books—Ninety-five Nights of Listening (2002) and Having Cut the Sparrow’s Heart (2010) were praised by Carol Muske-Dukes, David St. John, Cole Swenson, Bin Ramke, and Donald Revell, but she was sadly unable to survive clinical depression and killed herself in 2012 when she was 44.
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