December 17, 2014
My first wife, Kathy Fagan, and I were both graduate
students at the University of Utah in the early-mid 1980s, and Mark, besides
being an exciting and inspiring teacher, was very generous to us. A couple of
times we house-sat for him in his big brick house up in the Avenues, not too
far from the "Continental College of Beauty, a beauty college about whom
he wrote a very lovely, wise, and funny poem. Mark even gave us his
hand-me-down car, an old rusty Fiat whose front passenger light was held
together with bailing wire. Mark had bought the car from Artist, William
Bailey, so it had quite a pedigree, that old Fiat.
Mark was married to Jules then, a big, brassy,
filled-with-laughter personality, and he had two of his three children during
those years, Tom and Fritha, who were both lovely babies. His other child,
Jessica, who was more our ages, also visited him, and we hung out with her a
bit, too.
Mark, with his Ferragamo loafers, his exquisite
wines, and his Cashmere scarves, jackets, and sweaters, was one of the more
fashionable people whom I've had the pleasure to know (He used to joke that
Joseph Brodsky told him once, "I have a genius for poetry, Mark, but you,
you have a genius for life"), and I'll always remember his generosity (he
helped a number of us young poets get published and get our first jobs), as
well as his acute intelligence, and his sharp, ironic sense of humor; however, what I think I'll remember most was
a cold late November evening in class when he kept us all spellbound well
beyond our ending time as he talked about poems, poets he had known, and
poetry. There seemed an almost palpable glow around him then. I saw remnants of
that glow at other times, mostly when he read poems or prose -- he published
his book of short stories, Mr. and Mrs. Baby during that time, and he was
writing for Vogue Magazine then, in what he called his "high style"
of prose -- but, for me, the glow was most fiercely bright on that cold late
November evening. I feel blessed to have witness it.
The years when I was a graduate student at the
University of Utah were filled with poets and writers who went on to make publish
books and establish reputations, such as Kathy Fagan, Liza Wieland, Scott
Carins, Gail Wronsky, Chuck Rosenthal, and Kevin Cantwell. With the exception
of Chuck, who wrote fiction, we were all Mark’s students. After we graduated and moved on, I didn't see
Mark until years later, in the mid--late ought 2000s, at a conference, MLA or
AWP, I think. I had grown old and hoary by then, and Mark didn't recognize me
when I came up to him. He had to look twice at my name tag, as he exclaimed in
surprise at how much the ravages of time changed me. But Mark still looked the
same, over twenty years later, just a little craggier around the face is all.
And just as brilliant. And that glow was still there. I feel privileged to have
known him.
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