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Editorial Page
Poetry
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Interview conducted by Andrew Angus
1. Andrew: Describe yourself .(extrovert, introvert, athletic, etc. )
Mark: I'm an athletic extrovert
2. Andrew: What do you think makes a poetrybook a bestseller?
Mark: A great bunch of poems with very diverse subject matter and knowing the right people.
3. Andrew: What makes a poem a classic?
Mark: It's theme is the most critical factor.
4. Andrew: Why do you like to write poems with a sports theme? (baseball, basketball, billiards, fishing, mountain climbing, etc.)
Mark: I've always enjoyed sporst so it's a theme I'm extremely familiar with.
5. Andrew: What is your favorite theme in composing poems? (sports, nature, Christmas, romance, etc.)
Mark: Light humor with romance and family experiences being the first 2 chosen sources for inspiration.
6. Andrew: Does a person have to have a bachelor's degree or master's degree in creative writing to be a good poet?
Mark: Of course not.
7. Andrew: What inspired you to write the poem "Old Babe" (which is so far your longest poem in the book at 41 stanzas)?
Mark: No particular inspiration, I just have an active imagination and I always enjoyed the poem "Casey At The Bat", or whatever it is called???
8.Andrew: Did you write "Old Babe" in one day or was the poem written in many days or more than one week?
Mark: About 3 days and then a few weeks of off and on tweeking as almost always before I release them......
9. Andrew: In what year was your book about antiques published? Was it a bestseller? Did the book sold profitably?
Mark: It was published in Jan. of 2003. It's done extremely well for a book about antiques. Billiards is a small field and it's the finest book on this particular subject produced to this point in time.
10. Andrew: Why did you publish your poetry book (Phonetical Imagery) at a later age ?
Mark: Why did you not publish your poems when you were in your 30's? Were you so busy with your antique business? Never had the time to devote to a self-published book. Funds for self-publishing have been hard to muster as well.
11. Andrew: Have you read a poetrybook, not yours, lately?
Mark: No. I very seldom read poetry. I suspect that really bad poetry has a tendency to weaken a person's writing ability and there is so much bad poetry out there it's amazing what gets published. Like I said earlier, a lot of success is conected to knowing the right influential people in the literary world, whom I do NOT know.
12. Andrew: Have you made poetry readings in front of an audience? How does it feel?
Mark: Once only. I was asked to do a small public TV show when a local poet here in Iowa City discovered my work and I did and it went over very well. I was quite nervous.
13. Andrew: Does advertising (in any form) help in increasing book sales?
Mark: Defintely, but it's a little difficult to know what the best ways to do the advertisng are.
14. Andrew: Do you think you can write a poem as long as 100 stanzas?
Mark: I think so. Other work has kept me from the scribbling tablet for several weeks now, sadly, and I can feel the opportunity to continue with the poetry slipping through my fingers every day. I hope this will suffice......not getting enough sleep with all the work to get done around here lately.....
Poet from Iowa
Poet of the Month of June
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