Ryan Walker on Felonies of Illusion

My long-time Washington DC poetry compatriot Ryan Walker (pictured above reading at the DC Arts Center) says the following about my latest book Felonies of Illusion on a recent blog entry:

I have some poetry juices lately for reading and maybe a little for writing, eh? I like mark’s book. it is one of about 5 poetry books that I’ve looked at this year. felonies of illusion. hi mark. it is a strange book because… of its persistence and there is a machine-like craziness to it. frankenstein. it reads like a book that maybe a human started but then it started going of its own. it’s a long poetry book. there’s a brutality, methinks, to how it persists in a uniform (kinda) way. when I reed it, sometimes it occurs to me that the author maybe was not aware of that quality of persistence even tho to me that quality is hard to miss… for anyone except, possibly, the author, I imagine, for some reason. brutal machine-like persistence.

I like Ryan's take and continue to be fascinated by the differing kinds of reactions and non-reactions I've received for the book. Certainly I've long loved both Frankenstein and his monster. I think it's right to talk about the inhuman and the brutal in much of my writing. As for persistence, what else have I got? The world stuffed most of my imagination a long time ago.

If you don't know it, Ryan's blog is one of the most unique blogs around. A relentless persistence in exploring his own inner processes and their relation to the outside world is how I would describe what he does. It's not really a poetry blog as such although he often discusses poetry. But he often discusses everything that might very well be on his mind or that just turns out to be on his mind when he starts writing. It's interesting that Ryan and I both have persistence but of completely different kinds.

Thanks, Ryan.