Back to the Beginning

 Martha Deed


First Writing 1941 before Age 1

Writing was in my DNA

By Martha Deed

A "writing" from 1941 may explain why I have no memory of when I started writing.  I do know I was born into at least five generations of newspaper people.  My great and 2d great grandfathers published and edited The Long-Islander ‒ Walt Whitman's paper though WW had left Huntington long before my grandfathers took over.  Father and son ran the paper for more than 70 years (ca 1851-1927).

In our family, writing was not unusual even at an early age and my writings were saved.  My Dad ‒ writers on his side, too ‒ was a local reporter for The Journal-News in 1941, but soon after became a senior editor at Young America Magazine, a competitor of My Weekly Reader.  He took each of us to work with him at least once a year once we were old enough to tolerate his commute from Nyack to midtown Manhattan.

Once there, I would write my story while he wrote his.  Before 1948, I made stories on paper with illustrations.  These were made into tiny books.  Once I was strong enough to hit the  keys, a spare typewriter would be wheeled into my father's office, and I wrote on letterhead.

Written at the Office 1948 Age 7

Spring 1958, I followed my parents' footsteps by being appointed Editor-in-Chief of the school newspaper, a position each parent had held in the 1930s.  That appointment was pivotal in my development as a writer.  I learned layout, how to write editorials and organize publication, including seminars for school newspaper editors at Columbia University and trips to the local printer for proofreading.  When I found more typos after the paper was published, I proofread again, reminding myself to be more careful.


School Newspaper December 1958 Page 1

As the newly-appointed Editor-in-Chief, I promptly overstepped my bounds. My first editorial was a critique of a new grading system that put advance class students at risk of losing their class rank at a time when college scholarships and acceptances were highly competitive. The editorial got me sent to the Principal's office for censorship which I accepted with indignation. 
Next, I fired a features editor when he failed to meet a deadline.  I was forced to rehire him.  The editor I fired was Dan Menaker who would go on to become Senior Fiction Editor at The New Yorker for 26 years and later Editor-in-Chief at Random House.  We did remain on speaking terms.

My first non-newspaper "publication" came in 1958 and was not the result of  my own efforts.  We were given a homework assignment to write a descriptive essay, and I was in full rebellion against unnecessary words.  I drafted the essay, then used a thesaurus to insert adjectives and adverbs for nearly every noun and verb, choosing the most flowery archaic words I could find.

My teacher entered it into the school's creative writing contest without my knowledge.  I came in second.


 
Elsewhere, I have mentioned writing days spent with my Grandmother.  Those writing sessions began in early elementary days.  She taught me to revise until the writing was the best I could do. Once the polishing was done, she taught me how to submit work by studying possible publications through careful reading, constructing appealing cover letters, making submissions free of error.  She taught me that marketing my work required as much precision as writing it in the first place.

My only problem was I didn't have much to write about.

A few years later, I did.  Although I considered myself to be headed toward a newspaper or magazine career, I was able to do an Independent Study with a future Consultant to Congress (Poet Laureate) for most of  a year.  Reed Whittemore helped me to edit my writing after I had put it on paper.  Under his guidance, I wrote a play, The Opening Way, which contained sections of poetry, and was produced by Carleton College's theater department the following Fall.

From "The Opening Way" a Play.  1962.

More poems came to me in my graduate school years (1964-1969).   The first poem that satisfied me was "To Jim Reeb, 1965."  I studied for my PhD at Boston University.  My  first graduate school adviser had been Martin Luther King, Jr's adviser several years earlier.  When a White pastor alumnus of BU was murdered during a civil rights protest in Selma, Alabama, MLK Jr returned to Boston to speak and organize a march.  I marched. 

I wrote the poem with meter and stanzas laid out to create the sound of marching feet.   

Many years later, I asked myself where the Black people were in this poem.  The photo I took that day of MLK Jr linking arms with BU faculty does not quite answer that question.

Photo Credit:  Martha Deed, 1965
 

For Jim Reeb, 1965
 

No signs, no banners, no songs ― 
ten thousand march in Boston.

From their churches and houses they come:
children in strollers,
women in heels,
seminarians and nuns in their robes.

And they fill the old streets of Boston
with their lines four abreast
stretching block after block
from Roxbury to Beacon Hill.

In silence they march to the Common 
for in senseless encounter
a man was beaten
and while they slept, he died.

He was one of them.

So now they go to the Common 
for their world has grown overnight
and now their city limits
reach a thousand miles to Selma.

They are silent,
and their hush has defeated
the curses and horns of those
who wait while they pass by.

They are people who grieve
that life is this way,
that it took death in Selma
to end sleep in Boston.

No signs, no banners, no songs ―
ten thousand march in Boston.

Inward Light, 1965

Once I completed my studies and launched my clinical and research career as a psychologist, poetry disappeared.  I wrote only one poem between 1973 and 1998 ‒ "Wifebeating" in 1976, but held it until I thought I could safely submit it for publication.  The poem sat on yellowing paper for thirty years.

Wifebeating

What I would like to say about wifebeating is
I have no first-hand knowledge
really, no broken bones or loosened teeth.
The bruises faded and I do not let him in the apartment anymore.

I have not been beaten because while
smashing me against the wall, he said
he was not doing anything I did not deserve
and I wasn't sure that he was wrong and three men in the apartment
closed the door so they would not see
it not happen.

But I hear my child's screams in the night,
He demands her presence,
says he does it in front of her
to show her what kind of a mother I am.

I am not the type of person who gets beaten.  I
am a nice and intelligent doctor, and he is not
a wifebeater because he is a minister, so it is impossible
I was assaulted.

I know I cannot have been beaten, each time worse than 
before, because I have asked for help many times,
asked men, because he does not like women anymore,
asked for someone to say:
What are you doing? It is not right
to threaten your wife. . .

Instead they ask me what I did to justify his rage
And they have each done
Nothing.  Therefore these fights cannot 
be happening, and I do not believe them
anymore.

Besides, it does not happen very often.
I have learned to keep my mouth shut.
I have left the house, abandoned my child's
fishtank and Christmas decorations.
He says I have abandoned him, his grieving friends approach
about my desertion, his broken heart,
and I am shamed.

But you asked about wifebeating and I am not the one
to talk about it, as you can see.  Because I have not
been threatened with murder which happened to a friend
of mine whose husband stabbed her 

twenty-six times
in front of their three kids
and no one came 'til
she was dead.

It must have taken a long time to stick in the knife
and take it out and stick it in again
twenty-six times
in front of the kids to show them
what kind of a mother they had

The Hiss Quarterly, November 2006

 
Despite my success with poetry in the 1960s, I still considered myself to be a prose writer.  Throughout my career as a psychologist, I had many publications in newspapers and journals.  But no poetry.  Thus, I was surprised by the emergence of poetry soon after my retirement from clinical practice in 2000.  My poetic voice had changed dramatically from the nature and spiritual themes of my earlier work to a harder-edged political and cultural voice that I scarcely recognized initially. 

Winning first prize in the 2004 Boom Days Niagara Poetry Contest for my poem "Illegal Entry," convinced me that I could write poetry worthy of an audience, although I continued to write in other genre as well.   I took online courses, attended workshops and readings, subscribed to poetry newsletters to make up for lost time and frank ignorance.




Illegal Entry
 
Note:  Each year, the Coast Guard installs an ice boom to protect the power intakes at Niagara Falls from ice floes in Lake Erie.  Three sections of steel drums, chained together and anchored to the bottom of the Lake, overlap keeping out the ice, but allowing movement of small boats between the Lake and River.
 
Immigration officials report
the arrest of a young poem tonight
crossing over from Canada
without passing through customs
or declaring its value in American dollars.   
The poem refused to make a statement 
to authorities, but flashed a
simile as it exited the ice boom
and disappeared into traffic.
Passersby alerted police
who confiscated it during open
mic at a well-known Elmwood Avenue bar.
Police have yet to release the name of the illegal
poem as fingerprint and photocopy analysis
are incomplete.  Officials have scheduled a press
conference at 10 AM tomorrow in the lobby
of the Federal Building.  Until then, officials
remind the public that, while extreme fear
is not appropriate, officials cannot guarantee
the safety of those who import or read
foreign poems.  INS spokesperson 
Guy Laroach told our reporter,
"It's a problem we have every year: 
Unauthorized foreign poems 
attempting to enter the country
with insufficient documentation,
words sliding willy-nilly across our
ice boom.   These poems, often Canadian in origin,
but sometimes from other lands as well,
reduce employment opportunities for our local
homegrown poems.  We are doing 
everything we can to prevent their entry
with little cooperation from the Canadian
authorities who have an interest in letting their poems
go, in order to enhance employment
opportunities for those who stay behind.
Thank goodness, Spring will soon be here.
The poems will drown if they make any
further attempts, because we are removing
the ice boom tomorrow, and they will be forced
back upon the internet where they will languish
unseen, and pose no threat to our native poets."

Artvoice April 1, 2004


When I found myself writing political poems in the early 2000s, I was concerned that they lacked permanence.  Now I am concerned that so many of them remain relevant. Twenty-five years into this second writing career, poetry has become my primary writing challenge.  I continue to read others' work, to experiment with form and content. Personal, political and cultural history continues to underlie much of my work.