Greatest Living Poet

"That there is poetry is the only evidence that man truly exists." Mark Staber Kobo


Mark Staber Kobo is a modern American poet and philosopher, also known by name Mark Chandos, author of the famous space faring epic poem Chandos Ring.


Greatest Living Poet: Strange Gods, Bulk Prophecies represents the highest form of lyric poetry in contemporary literature. In his book, Mark Staber Kobo attempts to restate the central problems of modern poetry. He presents a very clear and healing answer to how to write modern poetry - and shows how each poem creates a new language and represents a break with the past. He poses the question: What is the problem with modern poetry? The poetry of the last century sought to solve the incongruence of poetic language in the modern world by resorting to newspaper prose. Greatest Living Poet recovers the prestige of poetry by showing that human mind, itself, is a poetic protocol. The central thesis of Mark Kobo is that modernism has mistaken how human consciousness operates. Science, in his view, itself, is a poetic representation of reality. Therefore, Kobo creates a new lyric language to prove this phenomenon.


Here is an example from the book:


Copper Floods


Black pools gave up arms and men where none would touch the
water since all was let loose under, stitched in their brain,
battenedon bone, a finger from a tailor's seam.


They thought once never to see a stranger thing

as floods lifting coffins from their planting,

still bright and burnished and harlot deep

who made a bed where all could see.


She was one who never chose one country,

one copper house, and curse all staying;

rooms, like lovers, with just one corner good,

not keep again as spouse, as child, accusers.


I have raised dead in many cities and will see more;

all the brass here has been touched;

heart and bone made lighter now

half stitches rubrics splitting seams.



I have always changed your house; already

I have placed a shout inside your dark sobbing

that does not suffer long a little room and shuns

all steady lodging. I will always send you floods,


some to take away, some to raise.


I have dug in many fields and will find more

no margin for the water on my lids;

they cross this lake who shave its frost,

they swim this night who still can sleep


on splitting beams, on drowning beds.