Martha Baird

Martha Baird (1921-1981) was an American poet, editor, prose author, editor, and musicologist.

Life
Baird was born in Dodge City, Iowa. She earned a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Iowa. She worked in Chicago for WGN radio; then moved to New York City, where she joined the American Guild of Variety Artists. In New York she studied the philosophy of Aesthetic Realism, founded by Eli Siegel. Baird became secretary of the Society for Aesthetic Realism, and married Siegel in 1944.

She published a collection of poetry, Nice Deity, in 1955. She also wrote 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). Her poetry was featured in the 1959 anthology Personal and Impersonal: Six Aesthetic Realists (1959).