Martha Baird

Martha Baird was a poet, editor, author, and musicologist. Born in Dodge City, Kansas, Baird earned a BA from the State University of Iowa. Passionately invested in aesthetic realism, an artistic philosophy that stresses the reconciliation of opposites, Baird published a book of poems, Nice Deity (1955), as well as the radio plays The Inside and Outside of Winnington Snail and The Comma That Didn’t Belong Anywhere, which was adapted for the screen in 2009. Baird’s poetry was featured in the anthology Personal and Impersonal: Six Aesthetic Realists (1959) and Poetry For Pleasure (1960), among others. She edited Eil Siegel’s James and the Children: A Consideration of Henry James’s “The Turn of the Screw” (1968); with Ellen Reiss, The Williams-Siegel Documentary (1970); and Goodbye Profit System, also by Eli Siegel (1970), which she later adapted, with Tom Shields, as a three-act musical. (Source)