Mark DuCharme (USA)
1960
![]()
BOOKS OF POETRY
Life Could Be A Dream (Ann Arbor, Michigan: last generation press, 1990); Emphasis (Peacham, Vermont: :that: [issue of :that: magazine], 1993); i, a series (Cleveland: Burning Press, 1995); 4 sections from Infringement (Ra'anana, Israel: Oasis Press, 1996); Contracting Scale (Morris, Minnesota: Standing Stones Press, 1996); Three Works (Invasive Map) (Amman, Jordan: Oasis Press, 1998); Infringement (electronic publication: Light and Dust Books, 1998); Desire Series (Boulder, Colorado: Dead Metaphor Press, 1999); Near To (Brooklyn: Poetry New York/Meeting Eyes Bindery, 1999); Anon [with Anselm Hollo, Laura E. Wright and Patrick Pritchett, with illustrations by Jane Dalrymple-Hollo] (Boulder, Colorado: Potato Clock Editions, 2001); Cosmopolitan Tremble (Columbus, Ohio: Pavement Saw Press, 2002); Infinity Subsections (Brooklyn: Meeting Eyes Bindery, 2004); The Crowd Poems (Boulder, Colorado: Potato Clock Editions, 2007); The Sensory Cabinet (Kenmore, New York: BlazeVox Books, 2007); The Found Titles Project (electronic publication: Ahadada Books, 2009); Answer (Kenmore, New York: BlazeBox Books, 2011); The Unfinished Books: Books I-VI (Kenmore, New York: Blazevox Books, 2013); Counter Fluencies 1-20 (The Lune, 2017)
1960
Mark DuCharme was born in Detroit in 1960 and grew up in its suburbs, the only child of a divorced mother who worked as a secretary. He earned a BA from the University of Michigan and, later, an MFA from the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University.
He self-published a rather large chapbook in 1990 with which he later became dissatisfied. Numerous chapbooks have followed, as well as three books: Cosmopolitan Tremble (2002), Infinity Subsections (2004) and The Sensory Cabinet (2007). All of these contain “serial poetry” as well as “individual” poems. Beginning with The Found Titles Project (published in 2009 but written earlier in that decade) he abandoned serial poetry in favor of what he calls writing projects. The bulk of his work from this point on has been in the context of various writing projects. Since 2008, he has been at work on a project called The Unfinished. In 2018 he wrote We, The Monstrous: Script for an Unrealizable Film.
In addition to poetry, DuCharme has published numerous poetics essays. In 2006 he won the Neodata Endowment Grant in Literature, and he has also been selected for the Gertrude Stein Award in Innovative American Poetry from Sun & Moon Press. DuCharme was a coordinator of the Left Hand Reading Series, the archives of which can be found on the University of Pennsylvania’s PennSound website. He now curates the Stratford Park Reading Series in Boulder, Colorado, where he lives.
BOOKS OF POETRY
Life Could Be A Dream (Ann Arbor, Michigan: last generation press, 1990); Emphasis (Peacham, Vermont: :that: [issue of :that: magazine], 1993); i, a series (Cleveland: Burning Press, 1995); 4 sections from Infringement (Ra'anana, Israel: Oasis Press, 1996); Contracting Scale (Morris, Minnesota: Standing Stones Press, 1996); Three Works (Invasive Map) (Amman, Jordan: Oasis Press, 1998); Infringement (electronic publication: Light and Dust Books, 1998); Desire Series (Boulder, Colorado: Dead Metaphor Press, 1999); Near To (Brooklyn: Poetry New York/Meeting Eyes Bindery, 1999); Anon [with Anselm Hollo, Laura E. Wright and Patrick Pritchett, with illustrations by Jane Dalrymple-Hollo] (Boulder, Colorado: Potato Clock Editions, 2001); Cosmopolitan Tremble (Columbus, Ohio: Pavement Saw Press, 2002); Infinity Subsections (Brooklyn: Meeting Eyes Bindery, 2004); The Crowd Poems (Boulder, Colorado: Potato Clock Editions, 2007); The Sensory Cabinet (Kenmore, New York: BlazeVox Books, 2007); The Found Titles Project (electronic publication: Ahadada Books, 2009); Answer (Kenmore, New York: BlazeBox Books, 2011); The Unfinished Books: Books I-VI (Kenmore, New York: Blazevox Books, 2013); Counter Fluencies 1-20 (The Lune, 2017)
╬Winner of the PIP Gertrude Stein Awards for Innovative Poetry in English
2006-2007
Because
Because I could not stop for
What was no longer hidden
After the addictive necessity
Therefore I do not speak
Because I can, or whisper
Into the opening which could resubmerge
You in darker nights than we’d conceal
Encasing what was strange
Even turbulent, for a moment, because
I could find you, not there, but real, before
Drawing breath in order to linger
There because I could find you yet
We still could be submerged in
It, it does not matter where
It was, no more, turnabout to image
Image which is constant change
Because I could not stop, but dared
To inform the speaker of the matter
Matter which encompasses us
Do I find you here, up to the wicker
Steeped in lucent trafficking
For death, death to remain active in
A texture, an accidental barrier
& I cannot stop until then
____
Reprinted from The New Review of Literature, III, no. 2 (April 2006). Copyright ©2006 by Mark DuCharme.