The Delicate Poetry of Martha Ellen Johnson
- Elizabeth Gracen
- 3 days ago
- 13 min read
By Elizabeth Gracen:
It's a new year at the Flapper Press Poetry Café, where we continue to feature the work of poets from around the globe. It is an honor to share their work and learn more about their lives, influences, and love of poetry.
This week, we are honored to feature the work of poet Martha Ellen Johnson.
Martha Ellen Johnson is a retired social worker living on the Oregon coast. She has an MFA from Portland State University. Her poems and prose are published in various journals and online forums.
She writes to process the events of her life.
I reached out to Martha to talk about her poetry, passions, and insightful perspective.
Please meet Martha Ellen Johnson!
Elizabeth Gracen: Martha Ellen, thank you for taking the time to do this interview and talk to me about your lovely poetry. Please tell our readers a little bit about yourself and how writing poetry has become a part of your life.
Martha Ellen Johnson: It's been a long road from the awkward, insecure 12-year-old girl who lost sleep over trying to write a poem for a class assignment. I knew it had to rhyme. So I decided the subject: Stegosaurus, was a great place to start. I can't remember the grade, but I do remember the teacher's comment in red ink: "MARTHA!!!!!" Off to a rough start.
But before then, really, was an experience that was a turning point. I'm five and lying on my back on the small yard of the apartment building where I lived in a working-class burb just outside Chicago. It is a warm, sunny day. I hear strange, heavenly music. I looked into the puffy cumulus clouds above and I saw angels cavorting, jumping from cloud to cloud, playing their harps. I knew I could float up and join them far above the "fray" of my everyday life. It was the longing of a lonely child to connect to others.
I found art forms were the path for me. Any medium would do. I created my own world with drawings, paintings, on to needleworks and all sorts of other things. Words tagged along through everything. I earned a full Art scholarship to Bradley University in 1965 but had to give it back because art and college did not fit the constricting definition of "girl" adhered to strictly by my family. My dad finally threw me out when I was eighteen because he could and because I was not the girl they wanted. After high school, I began my formal education, class by class, because I was too poor to attend full time. I would try writing in journals but frequently lost them for unknown reasons. Scraps of paper were better—more casual, less intimidating with no pressure to make sure it was good. Besides, "fragments" seems a more appropriate understanding of the experiences of life—more temporary, more incidental, like some truth you stumble upon while doing something else.
I got married. I have two most precious children. I got divorced, too. At any rate, I finally earned my MFA in painting and drawing from Portland State University in 1981. I have a minor in Psychology, a subject that has always fascinated me. I could never earn enough with artwork to care for my children. I had a career in child protection social work, where my knowledge of human psychology came in handy, to say the least.
EG: We chose three of your five submitted poems, and two of them deal specifically with your father. One of those poems is featured in this article, but I’d love for your to share how poetry has helped you process your father’s passing and your complicated relationship with him. Tell me about the power of poetry and how it penetrates into the cracks of the most challenging emotions we have as human beings.
MEJ: Pop-Pop was my father-in-law, who was a strong, protective man I bonded to when I was still a teenager. I love my father, now resting in peace, but he was more of an apparition. I had a persistent longing for him even though he was there. Maybe this poem about him explains it better:
Dad
Alone, lost in my
delirium, through
the passages of my
recovery from traumas
intentionally inflicted
and accidental, from
stealth attacks of
smiling foes and
foolish choices all
my own. Though
I cried out for my mother
often, only once
did I call out for Dad
and it was simply
to ask where he was.
It was not a cry for
help. I knew better.
But knowing he was near
may bring some comfort
even if he looked away.
I whisper to an apparition:
I want to come home.
I want to come home.
Though I do not know
where that would be.
Pop-Pop perished in an instant while standing on a sidewalk talking with a friend about their upcoming fishing trip. It felt unreal, as though the geometry of the world had changed and may not work as it had before. Everything felt out of sync. And yet the world in which I was standing carried on, and new days would arrive, and I would occupy them without Pop-Pop. I tried to put that into words, to understand better myself the odd disconnect from the "real" world and, as always, with the hope my words would reach another who may say, "Hey, that's what I felt, too," and we would be connected in that uniquely human way.
I think I have this odd need to put the intangible into tangible—denotations and connotations. It's my way to put sometimes overwhelming emotions into a tidy little box to keep them from always swirling around and causing trouble, demanding to be heard and expressed. I can live my life tending to daily tasks knowing my emotions and thoughts have a place, and whenever I feel the need I can revisit them and know the sweetness, the sadness, the everything we feel as humans going through our lives. And it's all OK. Strong emotions are no longer overwhelming because they have been "processed." Senior Chief Petty Officer Malcolm Nance, who has seen too much in his military career, gave advice about healing from PTSD: tell the story over and over and over until all the power has been removed from it, like turning coal into a diamond. (BTW, Nance's grandfather and great uncle were runaway slaves who came north and joined the Union army. Brave.)
EG: You were a social worker for many years. Might you be able to share what it’s like to have had a career in a field that benefits others—and how that work influences your art?
MEJ: I worked in child protection, a challenging field, but I felt I was born to do that work along with art. It stretched the boundaries of my knowledge of human psychology and human behavior. I often came upon an innocence beyond sweet and tender as well as a darkness of the human psyche that, as an old hippie, I had wished so much wasn't there. But both are there in humans. What was quite strange for me to realize was, except for the few, even [for] those who have succumbed to deep darkness, there is an edge of light as if they were tricked into a terrible passage that ultimately brought them down. There is a morality tale here: don't follow dark impulses—fight them, or they will destroy you.
So Initially I would conduct an "interview" with a child who had made a statement or had injuries that indicated possible abuse, and because children are vulnerable and cannot protect themselves, they needed someone else. For a time that was me. I would document everything, often in the stilted style common to police reports. In fact, when I began to write prose and poetry in earnest, I would often make a first draft in "just the facts" style, as if that were "right" or "better." In my work, it was often necessary to set aside my feelings because they would interfere with gathering facts and may inhibit a child's need to "tell"—they did not need to cope with my feelings at that time. Also my appropriate emotions to perpetrators who, for reasons known only to them, decided to confess to me, which would have prevented them from talking [and] would compromise the ability to protect the child. Confessions are so much easier than criminal trials.
But as you can imagine, I was left with buried emotions that would need a path of expression or they would nag at me forever. They simply do not go away quietly as I had hoped they would. There was not only grief and joy but also deep fear. I was often in grave danger around angry people who were for certain armed in my rural part of America.
So there are "themes," human themes, that I could use in my quest for connection to others and, if I am fortunate, to help in healing not only myself but others . . . the path has focused on words.
EG: One of my favorite questions to ask a poet is about their influences—poetry, music, art, literature, dance, film . . . please share!
MEJ: It's our senses, isn't it? How we interface with the world. My son grew up to be a classical musician, contrabass, but the importance of sound to him was always there. I saw it clearly when he was 14 months old. We lived in a shabby apartment in Chicago, but we had a "stereo." He would hold on to the sofa and rock out to Led Zeppelin like [there] was no tomorrow, like he was in a mosh pit. I loved it. And before he could speak words, he loved making all sorts of sounds with his voice or with anything he could use as a drum.
Of course, visual art meant so much to me, always: Western art, where often the human is the subject, and Eastern art, where the human is often just a part of the subject of the landscape. I loved the "Art of the Floating World" because everything truly is temporary. I would write small poems on scraps of paper and drop them anywhere—in the Safeway parking lot, in the JC Penney foyer, in the woods behind the community college . . . sometimes in a "zine" tacked to a bulletin board. Anonymous. They could be found or not. I let them go into lives of their own, like children. I adore Vincent [van Gogh] because, you know, Sunflowers are not really Sunflowers and Bedroom at Arles is not that either. I wrote a long poem with a long title that starts: "It Was Never About Vincent's Bandaged Ear, Nor Her Smile, nor the Slipped Strap . . ." etc., because I think other feelings/thoughts always tag along with our brain's interpretation of sensory input—the "connotations," brush stroke direction, conflicting hues, the unspoken . . . and it's all so fleeting, as if it must be captured with a butterfly net made of words or other elements of expression. Everything is always about something else, too.
I loved painting on large canvases, but years ago I sustained a debilitating central nervous injury due to exposure to toxins and am left too weak and disabled to fight with a large canvas. Words have taken the place of paint. I sit with my Macbook Pro and wear out the sofa. Another thing: in old age, both hemispheres of the brain communicate more freely and easily, so we can use that to complete a broader whole piece. I read Moby Dick when I was fifteen. Quequeg became my friend, but I'm more like Ishmael, clinging to his coffin for dear life. I love films, and mostly actors. All artists are brave, vulnerable, and willing to make complete fools of themselves and still keep going. We're like the optimistic child who keeps digging through a pile of horse poop because "there must be a pony around here somewhere."
EG: Do you currently find yourself leaning toward any particular energetic direction with your writing? If you could write a poem to your fellow human beings right now, what kind of poem would it be, and what would you want them to know?
MEJ: Maybe it's because I'm old, but small things no longer barge in and take over. I love every day, and mostly the days with less pain. The beauty of the natural world is almost too much to take. My crow friends, Jack and Olga, visit the garden often. Once, Olga brought four chicks so they could see the large, featherless, sad creature who nevertheless tosses peanuts from time to time. Last year, only one chick survived, and even with broken hearts they taught her the courage a crow needs to leap from the peak of the roof next door and take flight. "Follow me." She did. It worked.
When I am able, I go to the Senior Center for old-people aerobics. There is a boatload of wisdom within those walls. And we have the courtesy and politeness from the "old days." My friend Chong always hugs me and tells me something I cannot understand, but I know it's good.
But one thing has stayed with me that is true, just invisible. It's something I hope everyone keeps in mind through all the slings and arrows. Once, I had a dream where I saw millions of luminous threads connecting all living things. So the connection I had longed for has always been there. If only my words could convey that.
EG: Martha Ellen, thanks so much for the interview. Please tell our readers where they can find more of your work and what they can expect from your pen in the coming year. Good luck with everything you are doing. Much peace!
MEJ: Oh, thank you, Elizabeth. My poems and prose are in many publications. Here's a few [some are upcoming]: All Your Stories, Auroras and Blossoms, Breathe, Deaf Poetry Now!, Double Speak Magazine, Down In the Dirt, East Point West Press, Highland Park Poetry, Hoffman Center for the Arts, Hot Potato Magazine, J.Journal CUNY, Locust Shell Journal, Marrow Magazine, North Coast Squid, Oddball Magazine, Pink Panther Press, Persimmon Tree, Poem Alone, RAIN, Salal Review, Synchroniciti, The Lake [uk], The PoArtMo Magazine, The Queen’s Review, The Syzgyny Poetry Journal, Verse-Virtual, WELL READ magazine . . . and many more.
I will tell you that East Point West Press is a chapbook made by a publisher in Washington state who hand sets letters and uses an antique press to print on linen paper. Handmade is beautiful. And I love the editors at Oddball Press because they told me they would get back to me soon, to have patience because they both have day jobs! I loved it.
My son said he would help me set up a website. That may happen.
Pop-Pop’s Death
Did he slip through the slimmest
of apertures? A shallow breath
taken in haste before sinking deep
beneath a surface where all continues
on as though nothing were amiss.
Words are strung together without missing
inflection when there should be poor
enunciation and the softening of final
consonants easing through this cosmic fissure.
But sirens keep their steady scream rushing
toward some emergent scene. His slippers
next to his easy chair. Steaks in
the freezer. Pill bottles near a glass.
A snowy weekend is predicted.
From the poet:
When my father-in-law died mid-sentence speaking to a buddy about their upcoming fishing trip, it felt unreal. I felt like a phantom wandering through his home, his belongings all there, ready for his return. And yet the events of an ordinary day went on. I knew, then, the whole world would continue without him.
The Trouble with Red Ribbons
I.
Sometimes I can feel the slippage
of time, different worlds plied,
past over present.
Before, the day I went to buy
some red ribbon,
bombs exploded on Commercial Street
just outside Fabricland.
“Hello. Enjoying the sunshine?”
the clerk asked while ringing up the sale.
Unaware.
The Beast was knocking in Bruges.
“Offen die Tür!”
“Yes, a little too hot for me.”
Then, in sotto voce she said,
“They took my four uncles into
the woods. Never seen again.”
“My Tante went missing, too,” I said.
Amid distant gunshots,
we had heard them calling.
“Denk aan ons.” Remember us.
Rivulets of blood like red ribbons.
But not this day. All’s quiet.
She hands me a receipt.
We smile like strangers.
I leave and head for home.
There is only a light breeze
on a warm and sunny day.
II.
Now I’m losing a myopic view
of long gone events.
Allowing them to fade
into the fog of history.
Regaining perspective
and proportion.
Birth announcement.
Flattened booties.
Bronzed baby shoe.
First drawing of the kitty.
Photo of her holding Maxie
when he was just a puppy.
Macaroni necklace.
Recital invitation.
“1st Place” red ribbon.
The poem about a dinosaur.
Doily Valentine.
“To Mom. Love, Rosie.”
Brand new Karlsson resin, dark.
Tante’s rosary.
Discharge summary.
Dale’s letter. “Come to Alaska with me.”
Threw everything with the
funeral notice, the memoir
transcript, even the red ribbon,
into a box in the basement.
From the poet:
Time is strange. It slips around. I was simply purchasing some red ribbon for a project at home and then out of the blue the clerk told me of her uncles killed during WWII, and I told her about my Tante, the Mother Superior of an orphanage. During the occupation, she and other nuns hid orphaned Jewish children from the Nazis. Soon they caught on. Our family lost track of her until 60+ years later when the diocese informed me of her final resting place. And the time of my life when I was caring for babies and children had slipped away, too. I had to let it all go.
Torn and Mended
Torn. April 24, 2019
During the night
of her birthday
I dreamt I looked for
her in the kitchen
of our old Chicago
apartment after I saw
some pink roses tossed
aside on the table. She
wasn’t there. Escaped
through a broken door.
The well-kept grounds
of a huge estate appeared.
She had run away through
an elaborate arbor scattering
dozens of pink roses and
cedar boughs on the ground,
the same flowers and greens
Kim and I had combined
with rosemary for the
funeral arrangement in
memory of all we lost.
Today she left no rosemary
among the cedar and roses.
She was gone. I was forgotten.
I had failed her. I could not
believe what she wanted
me to believe. In my memoir
every word is rosemary.
Mended. July 28, 2022
In my dream I knew
she was home though
I had not heard her arrive.
I saw her jacket draped
across the kitchen chair.
Her phone was on the table.
She appeared. Both of us
breathless, suspended in
the alternate dimension
of unmerited Grace, she
smiled with compassion
and forgiveness.
I prepared her favorite meal,
Mediterranean-style lamb
with dill. I went upstairs
to lie down on the bed made
with the quilt, Grandma’s
Flower Garden, Aunt Florence
stitched fifty years before.
It was perfect, not tattered
nor worn as it had been.
She lie down next to me.
I held her with maternal
tenderness. She was a small
child. Her soft blonde hair
brushed against my cheek.
We did not speak. She arose.
Her brother had arrived
through the new door he built.
She sat next to him on the
flowered tapestry loveseat
under the South windows. A
diffuse afternoon light embraced
them, like in a dream. They
were children again. Laughing.
They began to sing in harmony
as before. Together, easy
and at peace.
From the poet:
Painful and puzzling breaks in a family can be healed with the assistance of the two strongest warriors: Time and Patience. Sometimes I had believed only I could “fix” things, but I was wrong.
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