Craft: Carl R. Martin

Carl Martin (b. 1954) is one of the least read, but most intriguing poets I can think of. His poems were highly praised by John Ashbery, Gilbert Sorrentino, Barbara Guest, and Michael Palmer. But for either secret or unknowable reasons, Martin’s poetry is hard to find, and it has been buried like so much American culture under 1,000 feet of crap.

Martin grew up in Winston-Salem, North Carolina and was the first Black graduate of the Oak Ridge Military Academy, an institution which stopped studies to fight for the Confederacy during the Civil War. There he was editor of the school paper and center forward of the soccer team. He briefly attended (for a semester) college at Virginia Commonwealth University, before receiving a BA in 1981 from Maharishi International University in Fairfield, Iowa.

Martin, c. 1991