Mark Turbyfill
Mark Turbyfill was a multifaceted artist born in 1896 in Wynnewood, Oklahoma, who later became a prominent figure in the Chicago artistic scene. Initially involved in poetry, he published his first works in high school and became acquainted with influential literary figures and journals of the time, earning accolades such as the Young Poets Prize from Poetry magazine consecutively from 1917 to 1919. His interest in ballet began during his teenage years, and after serving in the military during World War I, he joined the Chicago Grand Opera Company Ballet, showcasing his talents as a dancer. Throughout the 1920s, Turbyfill not only continued to write poetry, with notable collections like *A Marriage in Space, and Other Poems*, but also ventured into choreography and ballet teaching, striving to create opportunities for black dancers alongside Katherine Dunham.
As his career progressed, he shifted focus towards dance criticism and eventually began painting, a pursuit he embraced fully after 1931. Turbyfill's artistic endeavors culminated in several solo exhibitions, with some of his work featured in the Smithsonian Museum's permanent collection. His diverse contributions to literature, dance, and visual arts reflect a creative spirit deeply engaged in exploring the intersections of movement and expression across different mediums.
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Mark Turbyfill
Poet
- Born: June 29, 1896
- Birthplace: Wynnewood, Oklahoma
- Died: June 6, 1990
Biography
Mark Turbyfill was born in 1896 in Wynnewood, Oklahoma, a town about fifty miles from Oklahoma City, which was then the administrative capital of what was known as the Indian Territory. His father, a North Carolinian, and mother, a Texan, moved to Oklahoma City after he was born. His father was a carpenter who eventually became an architect and then a partner in an architectural firm. When Turbyfill was eleven, the family moved to Chicago because of a sagging economic climate brought on by crop failures. His father found a job with Marshall and Fox, a prominent architectural firm, and Turbyfill attended Lake View High School. There he published his first poems in the school newspaper, the Red and White. Turbyfill made Chicago his personal and professional home.
Chicago was experiencing a second artistic renaissance at the time. Despite his youth, Turbyfill became acquainted with the editors of two prestigious poetry journals, the Little Review and Poetry, that were on the cusp of poetic theory and practice. Both journals published Imagist poems popularized by H. D. (Hilda Doolittle). Most of his poems appeared in the two journals and he met the leading poets of the time, including Amy Lowell. He won Poetry’s Young Poets Prize in 1917, 1918, and 1919.
In 1917, he began to study ballet, which he had seen in high school, with Serge Oukrainsky, but his poetic and ballet ambitions were interrupted when he enlisted in the army in 1918. He spent the remaining months of World War I in Illinois and after being in New York for a short while returned to Chicago, where Oukrainsky gave him a place in the Chicago Grand Opera Company Ballet. Turbyfill danced with this company until 1921, the year that his volume of poetry, The Living Frieze, was published and favorably reviewed. Three years later he was a principal dancer for Allied Arts in Chicago.
In 1926, he won the Helen Haire Levinson Prize for poetry and began his association with dancer Ruth Page, about whose work he wrote a monograph. With Samuel Putnam he also published Evaporation: A Symposium and his best poetry appeared in the late 1920’s in the collection A Marriage in Space, and Other Poems (1927). During the 1920’s, he choreographed and taught ballet. In fact, his ballet teaching to black students led him and African American dancer Katherine Dunham to attempt to form the first black ballet corps. Their attempt failed, but Dunham succeeded a few years later. In the 1930’s he also was a dance critic for the Chicagoan, The Dance magazine, and the Chicago Herald and Examiner.
Clearly he had gravitated from writing to ballet and the titles of his poems involved movement; his collection The Words Beneath Us: Balletic Poems, published in 1951, reflects his obsession with ballet. However, he later embarked on yet another art form, painting, which he had begun as a hobby in 1931. His first solo art exhibition in 1948 was followed by one- man shows in the 1950’s and 1960’s, and some of his work is in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Museum.