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Book-Signing Event to Feature Biography of UT Alumnus |
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PR Staff |
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Apr 15, 2004 |
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The Ward M. Canaday Center for Special Collections at The University of Toledo will celebrate the publishing of Herbert Woodward Martin and the African American Tradition in Poetry (Kent State University Press, 2004) with a talk and book signing by author and the subject of the biography on Wednesday, April 21, at 3:30 p.m.
Author Ronald Primeau, professor of English at Central Michigan University, will give a talk titled “In Quest of the Quiet Warrior: 50 Years of Herbert W. Martin.” It will focus on Martin’s life and Primeau’s efforts to write the biography using the collection of Martin’s personal papers that are housed in the Canaday Center. Martin, a 1964 UT graduate, also will speak at the event, which will take place in the Canaday Center.
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| Dr. Herbert W. Martin |
Martin was born in Birmingham, Ala., but moved to Toledo with his mother and father in 1945. He graduated from Scott High School and earned a bachelor of arts degree in English from UT in 1964. He also earned a master’s degree in literature at the Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College in 1972 and a doctorate in creative writing at Carnegie-Mellon University in 1979.
In Primeau’s book, he describes the faculty mentors at The University of Toledo who were important to Martin’s early development as a writer. These mentors included Ernest Gray and Sarah Bissell. Gray, now deceased, recognized Martin’s talent. But he urged Martin to “learn the rules of grammar” before he began to break them in his poetry. Martin said Gray’s advice “made sense after I calmed down my sophomoric arrogance and thought about what he had said. Besides, he was a considerate man who cared for both his black and white students when it was fashionable to care for the latter.” Professor Bissell, also deceased, became a lifelong mentor to Martin and is described by Primeau as having a great impact on Martin’s career.
When Martin decided to become a writer after attending the Antioch Writers’ Conference and the Bread Loaf School, he headed for New York with $5 in his pocket and a room at the YMCA. While he had great ambition to become a writer, he soon realized the difficulty in doing so. He landed a job at World Publishing with just $3 left to his name. While in New York, Martin forged many friendships with important writers of the time.
In 1969, he published his first book of poetry titled New York the Nine Million. In 1970, he became a professor at the University of Dayton and continues to teach courses in African-American literature and creative writing there.
In addition to New York the Nine Million, Martin has published six books of his poetry — The Shit Storm Poems, The Persistence of the Flesh, The Forms of Silence, Galileo’s Suns, A Matter of Honor and The Log of the Vigilante (of which Book Two is dedicated to Bissell and Gray). Another book, Painful Laughter, is forthcoming. Works by him have appeared in many prestigious literary and poetry journals.
Martin is an expert on the poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar, an African-American poet from Dayton whose first book, Majors and Minors, was published in 1895 while Dunbar was working as an elevator operator in Toledo. Martin recreates Dunbar in stage performances, as well as poet Langston Hughes. Martin is also an opera librettist and has won numerous awards, including the Ohio Governor’s Award for individual artist of the year in 2002.
Primeau is professor and director of the Master of Arts in Humanities Program at Central Michigan University. He is the author of seven books and holds a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois. He has studied Herbert Martin’s work for 25 years prior to writing the new biography.
For more information on the free, public book-signing event, contact Barbara Floyd, director of the Ward M. Canaday Center for Special Collections, at 419.530.2170.
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