Article from September/October 1998

As featured in September/October 1998

Handing Out Wings

Esteemed poet spurs love of words and images for all generations

By Thomasine Mosley Williams

Only the front door separates us now. Since 1973, when she came into my life on a cold January day in Baltimore, I've never been the same. For many years, her smiling face on the back cover of a book with an unusual title was my only entree. Her publishing house, Lotus Press, inked "Pink Ladies in the Afternoon," and gave us six years of her poetry.

As the door opens, I am now face-to-face with Naomi Long Madgett — poet, author, publisher and teacher. Her eyes are bright and dazzling. Curls framing her face make her appear even more delicate. She is warm and inviting. So warm that I asked if I might perhaps read my favorite poem that has kept us joined at the hip. "Late" is a poem for anyone who thinks of reunions.

I sip Pink Ladies in the afternoon,

Peruse old yearbooks, wonder where

My old companions

voted most likely to

succeed

Went.

At night

I cream and rinse away

30-day money back

guarantee

The sagging, creeping gray

To make green come again,

But the leaves fall and fall

And it is always almost-Christmas,

always unexpected,

And the cards get fewer and fewer.

It is May before I remember

The scribbled, impetuous promise

To call

twenty years too late

My dearest friend

once

Still

May does come again

anyhow.

It is still hard to imagine that this small-framed, elegant lady wrote the poem, "Midway," which was published in the fall 1961 issue of Freedomways. It set off a furor with its challenging directness that fueled the mood of the civil rights era in the early 1960s.

Its opening line, "I've come this far to freedom, and I won't turn back," was echoed throughout the decade and beyond. These powerful words have been set to music, recited by a Miss America contestant and even caused demonstrations which ultimately shut down a school fundraiser in New York City.

For more than six decades she has given us more than a generous sampling of her poetic expression and that of others. She has described herself in "Contemporary Authors" as one who, "...would rather be a good poet than anything else I can imagine."

Indeed she has evolved as "one of the many overlooked figures in African-American literary history," according to "The New Cavalcade: African American Writing from 1760 to the Present."

The youngest of three children and the only girl, Naomi Cornelia Long was born in Norfolk, Virginia, to a clergyman, Clarence Marcellus Long, who was then the pastor of Bank Street Church and a school teacher, Maude Hilton Long.

Her writing began out of necessity to ward off the internal pain of loneliness and isolation of being the only girl in the neighborhood. Often teased by her brothers and their friends, she was excluded from play. "I was a lonely and introverted child who felt isolated and different," Madgett said.

When her family moved to East Orange, New Jersey, she was the only black child in her classes until the eighth grade. Her father recognized her loneliness and his library became her playground. With encouragement from both of her parents, she began to write. She started writing perhaps between 7 and 8 years old; by 12 she had written over 100 poems.

She is proud of her father's foresight. His childhood minister and lifetime mentor, Rev. S.S. Jones, pastor of a church in Muskogie, Oklahoma, set an adventurous example. "Imagine 1925, a black man traveling with a movie camera across Europe, and then recording black life in Oklahoma in the 1920s." She still retains the footage produced by Jones which has been transferred to video. Her father also went to Europe and the Holy Land in 1934.

Her high school days opened up new venues for her writing and brought numerous accolades along the way when her father moved his family to St. Louis to pastor at Central Baptist Church.

At Charles Sumner High, "my new life was fuel to my poetry, much of which was regularly published in the yearbooks and other school publications." She grew up at a time when it was popular to be smart and since Sumner was a superior school, she took this open door. During this time, her poetry was published in newspapers and the "Missouri School Journal." She was a national winner in a writing contest sponsored by "Scholastic" magazine.

She is among an elite group of Sumner alumni such as St. Louis attorney Margaret Bush Wilson, comedian-activist Dick Gregory, the late human rights activist-tennis player Arthur Ashe, and baritone Robert McFerrin, the father of acappela singer Bobby McFerrin.

At the age of 16, her father signed a publishing contract for her. However, the company ownership changed and it was not until 1941, several days after her high school graduation, that Fortuny's published Songs to a Phantom Nightingale. She has always seemed ahead of her time. She wrote:

When I was young

and loved life's laughter,

I climbed tall hills

and touched the sun.

I did not know till long years after

That ecstasy and pain are one.

After high school it was on to Virginia State University and classes under the famous historian, Dr. Luther Porter Jackson Sr., an authority on freed blacks in Virginia. While there, Langston Hughes came for an evening reading. As introverted as she was, she managed to get up enough nerve to ask him to peer at one or two of her poems. He not only looked at them, he read them at his reading. "His words of praise left me dizzy," she said.

Following graduation, she worked a stint as a part-time writer and copywriter at the "Michigan Chronicle" in Detroit where she had moved with her first husband. Her marriage, although short-lived, produced her only daughter, Jill Witherspoon Boyer, also a poet now living in California.

With a young mouth to feed, she went to work as a service rep at a telephone company and continued to write. By the mid-1950s, her marriage to William Harold Madgett permitted her to leave the telephone company and attend school full-time. In one year, she earned her teaching certificate and master's degree from what is now Wayne State University.

For most of her life she resisted teaching, but in 1955 she began her career as a secondary English teacher. Her second book, "One and the Many," was published a year later during a dry period for black poets.

It received welcomed reviews and the attention of J. Saunders Redding, the scholar and critic who along with Arthur Davis and later Joyce Ann Joyce, edited two volumes of "Cavalcade." Redding included her poetry in this major work that chronicles four centuries of African-American literary footprints in poetry, short stories and excerpts of novels, essays and plays. She, along with 152 other writers, are showcased among more than 300 selections.

This was a very busy time in her life. She did not know any other African-American poets in Detroit but soon she would meet Oliver LaGrone, the poet and sculptor who had published a chapbook, a small collection of poems, that received national attention. The two often got together to talk and read their poems for radio audiences.

In 1959, a visit by Dr. Rosey E. Pool, a Dutch scholar and later editor of "Ik Zag Hoe Zwart Ik Was" [I Saw How Black I Was], an anthology of African-American poetry that Pool did on British radio, was the catalyst that brought black poets together in their homes for discussions and workshops.

During this fertile period, she introduced her American Literature classes to black poetry, led the fight for inclusion of African-American literature, taught the first experimental class in African-American literature and collaborated on several texts to be used in schools. After teaching the experimental class, a year later in 1966, African-American literature became part of the city-wide curriculum in Detroit.

Two years later she took her literary talents to Eastern Michigan University where she became an associate professor, and was later promoted to full professor. However, her writing and reading of poetry continued. For a short time in the early 1960s, she and a small contingent of poets read poetry frequently at the Boone House, which was located next door to the King Solomon Missionary Baptist Church complex on Fourteenth Street where Malcolm X delivered one of his famous speeches.

Margaret Danner, who was poet-in-residence at Wayne State University at the time, lived there. Sunday evening readings were performed around the fireplace by Edward Simpkins, Broadside Press founder Dudley Randall, Harold Lawrence, Alma Parks, Oliver LaGrone, Betty Ford and Madgett. She also read with James Edward McCall, an elderly blind local poet whose work was recognized at that time.

By 1972, Lotus Press was born. "I had no intention of doing it," she laughs. "I had been seeking a publisher for a new manuscript." She was tired of being rejected by white and small independent black publishing companies. "My quiet, reflective poetry, dealing with blackness in more subtle ways but transcending race, stood little chance of acceptance." It was often implied that her poetry was just not black enough.

Three friends agreed to finance the manuscript as an independent venture if she would do the groundwork. Armed with a typewriter with proportional fonts and a duplicator, she was in business. And she did it all. "I duplicated volumes of paper, numbered pages incorrectly and had to discard them. I made lots of mistakes, but I kept at it." "Pink Ladies in the Afternoon" was her first published attempt. The professionally printed and bound work received favorable attention.

After two years, she and her third husband, Leonard P. Andrews took over Lotus Press because her benefactors had decided to seek other projects. "After my first production, I had no intent on continuing. However, one of my students came to my office for comments and I was able to encourage her by producing a chapbook." "Inside the Devil's Mouth" by Baraka Sele (then known as Pamela Cobb), was published. Madgett typed the entire manuscript, and then discarded it and re-did it by hand, finally binding it with a used saddle stapler.

She would later publish "Dust of Uncertain Journey" by veteran playwright-poet May Miller, who was in her mid-90s. That was followed by Paulette Childress White's "Love Poem to a Black Junkie."

Occasionally a volunteer or intern would help. But this was truly a one-woman show and labor of love. She was the CEO, and CMH (the chief mail handler). She read manuscripts and performed all the positions of a publishing house-typing, editing, layout, cover design and promotion. And then there were books to keep, invoices to be sent, and packing and shipping of books.

During the 1970s the books were printed from typed masters and bound commercially. In 1980, Locus Press became a non-profit corporation and a year later received 501(c)(3) status. Generous donations made it possible for the first computer system that was later complemented by a laser printer. A storage and fulfillment company were retained.

In 1984, Dr. Naomi Long Madgett, feeling overwhelmed with juggling teaching, her 80-mile commute three days a week, and publishing, retired from Eastern Michigan University as professor emerita.

After all her hard work, Lotus Press has 76 titles to its credit. The works are diverse in subject matter and style, a few in cloth covered limited editions. Naomi Long Madgett's one criteria for selection was always "literary excellence." Five years ago, the Before Columbus Foundation presented her with a 1993 American Book Award during the American Booksellers Association Convention, recognizing her contributions as an outstanding publisher and editor.

Many of these books have received excellent reviews in prestigious journals and some of the authors' careers have flourished. The collections include both black and white authors. In addition to May Miller and Paulette Childress White, Lotus has published works by Toi Derricotte, Haki Madhubuti, Pinkie Gordon Lane, Louie Crew and E. Ethelbert Miller. Mr. Miller, the beloved poet laureate and director of the Howard University African American Library in Washington, D. C., has always been a supporter of women poets and writers. His quaint stage has often given female poets their wings.

On its twentieth anniversary in 1992, Lotus Press published its highly acclaimed "Adam of Ife: Black Women in Praise of Black Men," appointed with illustrations by Carl Owens and cover art by Paul Goodnight. In the foreword, she states, "While concentrating on positive images of black manhood, we have not forgotten our other brothers who have fallen by the wayside. They did not arrive at their present state without help. The American system has conspired, since the first African set foot on this soil to deprive him of his humanity. What other immigrant in world history has ever been defined legally as only 'three-fifths of a man'?" From the book she read her daughter, Jill Witherspoon Boyer's tribute to George Jackson.

In recent years, Madgett has collaborated with Carl Owens to blend poetry and fine art prints into beautiful posters. She had also worked on her autographical essays and family research.

"My most challenging and personally satisfying collection is 'Octavia and Other Poems' [Third World Press, 1988]," she acknowledges.

Octavia, her father's sister, died very young before Madgett's birth in 1923. She received Octavia's middle name, bore her physical resemblance, and was often told that she had her temperament. "As a child I had been so often compared to her that I sometimes felt her reincarnation." In the prologue, she wrote:

When as a child I wore your face, Octavia

(three years returned to earth), and christened

with your name,

set forth on my own odyssey,

I had no clothing of my own, only

depressive hand-me-downs, frayed remnants

of someone else's outgrown legacy.

My father dressed me in your skin

and such a garment, woven of his fabrication

of a second chance, was not to be discarded

easily.

A documentary by filmmaker Kathryn Vander, "A Poet's Voice," looks at the life and career of Madgett. In the film, Madgett reads selections from "Octavia," while the works of ten Detroit artists depict life situations describing Madgett's family's past in Guthrie, Oklahoma, and her attempt to step out of her Aunt Octavia's legacy.

At last she is free just to be. Today, at 75, Naomi Madgett Long is included in numerous anthologies. She writes, recites poetry for children and adults. The Lotus Press titles are distributed by the Michigan State University Press, where she was poetry editor for five years. She is still at Lotus' helm and awaits new projects, always willing to branch into the 21st century. With the foresight of her father, Naomi Long Madgett's papers are housed in the Special Collections Library at Fisk University. Madgett's dedication to writing and publishing have given us all the proud wings to fly higher into the next century.

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