Cynthia M. Gorton (née Roberts; pen name, Ida Glenwood; February 27, 1826 - August 10, 1894) was a blind 19th-century American poet and author.

[2] Gorton's first prose work, The Fatal Secret, was written wholly with a pencil, but she wrote so rapidly in an unconscious manner that she formed almost an entire new alphabet, unreadable except by those who had followed the transformation.

[1] These included The Fatal Secret, or a Romance of Mackinac Island, Kate Wynans and the Forger's Daughter, Ma Belle Queen, Tangled Threads, Black France, and others.

[2] Gorton was also involved in the temperance movement, presiding at public meetings, lecturing and reciting original poems.

Her short career as a platform speaker began with the recitation of a poem entitled Adolphus and Olivia, or a tale of Kansas.

Governor Reuben Fenton once noted "one must conclude, after listening to 'The Blind Bard of Michigan,' that if we would find the best and deepest poetical thoughts, we must look for them in the emanations from the imprisoned soul."