John Mark Eberhart
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John Mark Eberhart is the book review editor for The Kansas City Star newspaper in Kansas City, Missouri, and the author of two poetry collections, Broken Time and Night Watch. He was born November 28, 1960 in St. Joseph, Missouri, to John W. and Arda E. (Elliott) Eberhart, although his birth name was John Mark Reddick. His father, John W. Eberhart, had been "adopted" (the legality of the adoption has been questioned) but legally changed the family name back to Eberhart when John Mark was five years old.
John Mark Eberhart graduated from the the University of Missouri's School of Journalism in 1983 and received his Master's in English from the University of Missouri-Kansas City in 1998.
Eberhart's two poetry collections have been favorably reviewed in newspapers and literary journals. Of Broken Time, Baton Rouge Advocate columnist Danny Heitman wrote,
Within American letters, there’s a small but abiding tradition of newspaper journalists who moonlight as poets. Before he firmly established his fame, Carl Sandburg worked as a film reviewer at a Chicago daily. In Charlotte, N.C., Dannye Romine Powell is known not only as a favorite columnist of The Observer, but the author of two well-received books of verse, The Ecstasy of Regret and At Every Wedding Someone Stays Home. David Tucker is both an editor at the Newark Star-Ledger and the man behind the acclaimed poetry collections Late for Work and Days When Nothing Happens. That some of the nation’s best poets hail from newsrooms shouldn’t be too surprising, since both writing traditions depend on concision, narrative urgency and, first and foremost, a sharp eye for what is transitory. Such a sensibility informs the poems of Broken Time, the latest collection from John Mark Eberhart. ... While Eberhart the book editor is erudite and endlessly well-read, his poetry isn’t bookish. In fact, the cultural references of his poems hail mostly from music, that other wellspring of poetry, rather than figures of literature. The collection includes a sly valentine for Bonnie Raitt, a portrait of composer Charles Ives, and a tribute to bluesman (Blind) Willie Johnson, whose wild rhythms ran “like children playing in the dark down by the creek."[1]
In a 2005 review of Night Watch for the Manhattan (Kansas) Mercury, Mustaches author G.W. Clift wrote,
In part because the language of the poems is our language, the poems read quickly, and one is tempted to race on without considering the sophisticated observations being made in simple words. This reminded me of William Stafford's 'Thinking About Being Called Simple by a Critic.': 'I went to the fridge and opened it -- / sure enough the light was on. / I reached in and got the plums.' John Mark Eberhart has got some plums in 'Night Watch.' And they are plainly labeled.
Eberhart's poem, "Just One Ghost", was anthologized in Helicon Nine's Chance of a Ghost and also was selected for Honorable Mention in 2006 by the Science Fiction Writers of America. His journalism has won many regional and national awards, including honors from United Press International and the American Association of Sunday and Feature Editors.
- ^ Heitman, D: "Eberhart latest example of journalist turned poet." Baton Rouge Advocate, April 20, 2008.
