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July 9, 2025

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3 Top Story Arts

Spy Profile: Poet and Playwright Mary Wood

October 24, 2011 by Dave Wheelan

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Poet, playwright, conservationist, and consummate reader, Mary Wood, arrived on the Eastern Shore as a young wife to a teacher, then lawyer, Howard Wood in the early 1940s. Devoted to her husband in an era which always deferred to the career needs of the male spouse, there was no second guessing that decision as she raised her three children on a historic, but drafty, farmhouse on the edge of Centreville. Without a Bay Bridge to tie her to the cultural outlets of Baltimore or Washington, Mary turned to literature and poetry to fill the intellectual gap left from her years in New York City as a student at Barnard College.

Now, after more than 60 years of living in Centreville and Chestertown, she recalls those days, as well as shares her most current poetry with Dave Wheelan and Kurt Kolaja with a afternoon chat at her home a few blocks away from Washington College.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Filed Under: 3 Top Story, Arts

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Letters to Editor

  1. Mary Ellen M. Valliant says

    October 24, 2011 at 2:12 PM

    Mary Wood, my idol!

  2. Jenifer Emley says

    October 24, 2011 at 2:15 PM

    Mary Wood is a treasure.

  3. Bob Garson says

    October 24, 2011 at 3:43 PM

    Mary Wood is a multi-faceted talent…and a local treasure!

  4. Graham Coursey says

    October 24, 2011 at 7:29 PM

    I picked up a copy of Mary Wood’s first book of poems, “The Balanced Moment,” when I was 17 — in 1998. I’d just started working at the Queen Anne’s County Free Library, saw the book there, and purchased it at the old Corsica Bookshop — quite possibly with my first paycheck. I loved those poems then, and love them probably even more now that I’m a little older, and now that I no longer live on the Eastern Shore. I loved and love Mrs. Wood’s ability to convey the intimate and the universal, the broad and the specific, in her verse.

    Thank you for this profile; it was a great pleasure finally to “meet” Mary Wood.

  5. Robin Wood says

    October 25, 2011 at 4:36 AM

    You go, Ma! You’re a tough act to follow….

  6. Keith Thompson says

    October 25, 2011 at 5:42 AM

    I’d like to give Mary a big thank you for encouraging my playwriting efforts with the Live Playwright’s Society and I’m honored to call her a friend.

  7. Carla Massoni says

    October 25, 2011 at 12:41 PM

    Courage? You exemplify the very definition of the word. I am in awe.

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