A poet who invites you into her poem
March 17, 2025 — “My favorite poem is the poem I haven’t written yet.”
Martha Silano ’83
These are remarkable words coming from Martha Silano ’83, who has published six full-length collections of poetry and filled hundreds of journals with her writing. Her poetry speaks to a wide audience and has received several awards including the 2010 Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize and the 2023 Blue Lynx Prize.
This September, her book Terminal Surreal about her journey with ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) will be released, though it’s uncertain Silano will be around to see it. In October, Saturnalia Books will release Last Train to Paradise: New and Selected Poems, a compilation of her seven previous books.
“More and more, I feel less in control of what I am given to write,” Silano says. “Especially since my ALS diagnosis; I feel like I am not the one in charge.”
Growing up, Silano was fascinated by the natural world, and spent as much time as she could outdoors. “I was very aware of seasonality,” she says. “I chased moths, studied caterpillars, pressed leaves, and caught fireflies. I tended a vegetable garden. That curiosity is still with me and feeds my poetry.”
In second grade, Silano’s teacher, Mrs. Everett, recited Emily Dickinson’s poem “The morns are meeker than they were”, and a seed was planted. Soon after, Silano asked her mom for a diary, and she has written every day since. “I now have 200 boxes of a thousand journals,” she muses. “It’s a problem in my house. I’m going to have to get some storage.”
In a photo from her Grinnell College student days, Silano is studying plant taxonomy.
Silano came to Grinnell College from Metuchen, New Jersey, and graduated with an English degree, even though she wouldn’t focus on her poetry until years later. “I wrote poems at Grinnell, but they were rejected by The Grinnell Magazine, and I was refused early entry into a fiction writing class,” she recalls. “They thought I needed to read more authors so I’d know who I was imitating.” She maintained her notebooks, in which she would write poems but rarely shared them with others.
“At Grinnell, my time as a plant taxonomist was the most valuable takeaway,” Silano says. “I worked in the herbarium and learned so much from Vern Durkee. I fell in love with keying out plants. Everyone thought I’d get a second BA in biology and become a scientist, but poetry had other plans.”
Book cover for The One We
Call Ours
At age 25, Silano took her first creative writing class at Portland State, which led her to pursue an MFA at the University of Washington, and she’s made her home in the Pacific Northwest ever since. She’s taught at Bellevue and Edmonds Community Colleges, and she’s also been a guest lecturer, poet, and writer at several other schools. Silano and her husband, writer Langdon Cook have two children: Riley, age 24, an environmental science and political science major, and Ruby, age 20, who is an aspiring poet and visual artist.
“My kids have greatly influenced the subjects I write about,” Silano says. “They are empathetic, open-hearted, curious, and loving; I help them by listening with an open heart and mind and doing my best to cheer them on.”
Silano’s love of the written word is palpable when she speaks of it. “Writing is essential in my life, like food, being outdoors, and how yoga and running used to be,” she explains. “From the earliest time I can remember, I’ve always wanted to read and write.” Over the years, her daily writing has taken place in many spaces beyond her desk, even on the playground when her kids were young, scribbling with one hand while the other pushed a child on a swing.
Often appearing in her poetry, nature continues to be a prominent feature in Silano’s life. “The thing that makes me happiest after poetry is birdwatching,” she notes. A certified master birder, Silano has spent countless hours identifying birds, often by ear. Nowadays, she mostly watches and listens for birds from the vantage point of her wheelchair around her home or in a nearby park she visits frequently with her husband.
One of Silano’s more recent pieces, When I Learn Catastrophically, came about through an anagram generator website, Annagrammer, that Silano was introduced to by another poet friend, Kelli Russell Agodon. “When I was diagnosed with ALS, I wondered what the anagrams of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis were,” she says. “Once I had a list of words to work with, this poem just kind of wrote itself.” This poem will appear in the Best American Poetry series, which releases from Scribner in early September 2025.
Silano is pictured with Kelli Russell Agodon, left, and Susan Rich at the 2022 Skagit River Poetry Festival in Washington.
A lifelong learner, Silano has continuously immersed herself in reading and research, no matter the topic she’s exploring. It helps that she loves to read. Since her ALS diagnosis in November of 2023, she has read over 100 books. This thirst for knowledge stems from the teacher and poet, David Wagoner, whom she credits as having the most profound impact on her.
“Wagoner influenced my writing by quoting Stanley Kunitz who said, ‘a poet must know everything.’ I took his instruction seriously and tried my best to learn the names of all the birds, flowers, trees, and mushrooms of my region. I also read many books and articles about the cosmos, climate change, and other science-y subjects. I already loved everything to do with being out there with the bugs, plants, and birds, but he made me want to write poems about what I saw, heard, and felt.”
In the fall of 2024, Silano’s poetry colleagues gathered to pay tribute to her through reading her poetry. One event was in person and the other via Zoom. More than 180 people showed up in the online event in which several poets shared their thoughts about Silano ahead of reciting her pieces. Their words speak to the depths at which her poetry has touched others.
A Zoom photo shows the Thursday Night poetry club Silano takes part in.
“Martha has an incredibly brave insistence in loving the world even through the grief and loss and shock and horror,” said Jed Myers.
Her fellow poets noted how Silano’s poems pull in details of the tiniest leaf as well as awe for the great vastness of the universe. They celebrate mundane household experiences and cut open the depths of sorrow and grief.
“She has a beautiful way of weaving elements of cosmic creation, of evolution, of all flora and fauna, and us like an amazing and colorful salad,” said Ronda Piszk Broatch.
—by Melanie Drake ’92