Herbert Woodward Martin
Contributor

TVBC
DR. HERBERT WOODWARD MARTIN has served as Poet-in-Residence and Professor of English at the University of Dayton for more than thirty years. An accomplished scholar, teacher, poet, and singer, Dr. Martin is also nationally renowned for his portrayals of poet Paul Laurence Dunbar on behalf of the Ohio Humanities Council. 

Dr. Martin’s own published works include poetry, drama, opera libretti, and literary criticism. His writings have appeared in numerous anthologies and journals, including Images, Poetry, Ploughshares, Oxford Magazine, and Late Knocking. His published collections of poetry include Galileo’s Suns, The Forms of Silence, and The Log of the Vigilante, a journal of slave captivity. He also co-edited In His Own Voice: The Dramatic and Other Uncollected Works of Paul Laurence Dunbar, a volume of Dunbar’s previously unpublished short stories, essays, poems, and dramas.

Dr. Martin’s numerous awards and distinctions include the Mellon Poetry Prize; an honorary doctorate degree of humane letters from the University of Dayton; awards from the Ohio Humanities Council; a Fulbright Scholarship; and the 2002 Governor’s Award for the Arts given by the Ohio Arts Council in the “Individual Artist” category. Click Here to visit the University of Dayton's Paul Laurence Dunbar Site, featuring articles about Martin. Click Here listen in RealAudio to Martin's lecture on The African American Oral Tradition.

from The Log of the Vigilante /
Herbert Woodward Martin

0200

Tonight Spring air touches roots to sprouts
Sleeping in the winter earth.

Tonight the drums speak the prayers:
The rhythms of a troubled man.

Suddenly the drums rejoice:
They speak tightly of a running man.

His feet thud the cold responsive ground;
He flees; the dark dog clouds wrap around.

Suddenly the drums are silent;
Anxiety begins to bark at the night.

Spring has routed the roots and sprouts;
Tonight, a man flees towards fever.

0400

The drums speak of liquor
It distills the moment.
A dance is on the drums.
It struts before the midnight moon.
There is a man and woman
Young in their thighs
Dreaming in the false light.
The winter will keep their coming care
Like a soft secret only the drums
will willingly speak about.
When the Spring breaks anew
Like a breathless passion,
Like a bud routing its way
Up the branch of freedom
We shall sing again.