(1968–1984) and was artist-in-residence at West-
ern Michigan University (1998).
An award-winning poet, Madgett has published
eight collections of poetry since 1941. Her second
volume, One and the Many (1956), records her life
through the mid-1950s. Through her narrator,
Madgett reveals the personal conflict she experi-
enced as a poet who was considering shifting from
the lyricism found in such poems as “The Ivory
Tower” to the social and racial concerns found in
“Not I Alone,” where she speaks with a strong, pro-
testing voice against racism. In her next volume,
Star by Star (1965), Madgett, through her speakers,
explores the complexity of the black experience in
such poems as “For a Child,” “Violet,” “Alabama
Centennial,” “Pavlov,” and her most popular 1959
poem, “Midway,” in which her black speaker em-
bodies the voice of all Americans who were seeking
peace during a time of civil unrest. During this pe-
riod, Madgett, along with DUDLEY RANDALL, ROB-
ERT HAYDEN, OWEN DODSON, RONALD MILNER, and
HOYT FULLER, was a member of Margaret Danner’s
writer’s workshop at Boone House in Detroit from
1962–1964.
In 1972 Madgett, three friends, and Leon-
ard Patton Andrews, her third husband, founded
Lotus Press in Detroit. In 1974 she and Andrews
assumed total responsibility for Lotus Press, and
Madgett was the publisher and editor for nearly
two decades. Madgett published the works of
such poets as Samuel Allen, James A. Emanuel,
May Miller, Dudley Randall, LANCE JEFFERS, HAKI
R. MADHUBUTI, GAY L JONES, JUNE JORDAN, MARGA-
RET WALKER, Pinkie Gordon Lane, E. ETHELBERT
MILLER, TOI DERRICOTTE, PAULETTE CHILDRESS
WHITE, Ojaide Tanure, and Selene DeMedeiros.
Since 1993, Michigan State University Press has
distributed books for Lotus Press, which has re-
mained in Detroit. Madgett has served as senior
editor of its new Lotus Poetry Series.
Lotus Press published Madgett’s Pink Ladies
in the Afternoon: New Poems, 1965–1971, (1972),
which describes her life from the late 1960s and
early 1970s and addresses her dedication to her ca-
reer in the midst of civil disorder and the Vietnam
War, her approaching middle age, and her deep-
seated awareness of her heritage and identity in
such poems as “Black Woman”; “Glimpses to Af-
rica,” based on her trip to Africa with Operation
Crossroads; and “Newblack,” where the poet argues
against the senseless attacks on distinguished black
leaders from BOOKER T. WASHINGTON to MARTIN
LUTHER KING, JR.
Madgett’s fifth poetry collection, Exits and En-
trances: New Poems (1978), another Lotus Press
publication, continues and enlarges the auto-
biographical focus of Pink Ladies, reemphasizes
the poet’s interest in Afro-American themes, and
contains her most recent lyrics in poems such as
“Family Portrait,” “The Silver Cord,” “Fifth Street
Exit, Richmond,” “City Night,” “Monday Morning
Blues,” and “The Old Women.” Her next volume,
Phantom Nightingale: Juvenilia (1981), includes
poems that reflect her formal classroom education,
her informal education, and her contemporary life,
with titles like “Threnody,” “Sonnet,” “Pianissimo,”
“Democracy,” and “Market Street.”
By the 1970s and 1980s, Madgett’s work shifted
from a political stance to more personal, major so-
cial concerns with black women and their relation-
ships with their families. Octavia and Other Poems
(1988), a national cowinner of the College Lan-
guage Association Creative Achievement Award,
re-creates black family life in Oklahoma and
Kansas in the early 20th century and centers on
Madgett’s great-aunt, Octavia Cornelia Long, and
several other members of her family, depicting the
personal responsibility of women for the welfare
of the community. Remembrances of Spring: Col-
lected Early Poems (1993) commemorates Midg-
ett’s work as an editor and publisher and provides
a retrospective examination of a powerful poetic
voice and social conscience that has touched her
readers’ imaginations. Madgett’s latest collection is
Connected Islands: New and Selected Poems (2004).
Madgett, like Dudley Randall, founder of
Broadside Press, has been a champion in the
struggle to promote the creation, distribution,
and preservation of African-American poetry over
three decades. For her commitment, and for her
own love of self-expression, which she hopes “will
continue to have meaning to others after [her]
voice is still,” Madgett’s work has earned her many
awards. She was inducted into the Literary Hall of324 Madgett, Naomi Long