[1] His work was admired by Frank O'Hara, James Schuyler, Harry Mathews, and others, and translated extensively by John Ashbery, with whom he shared his life in Paris for nearly a decade.
He joined the Free French Forces in North Africa when World War II interrupted his college studies at the School of Political Science, Paris.
For more than twenty years, he was drama and music critic at Paris Match, where he mentored and worked with the journalist Denis Demonpion, now editor of Le Point and a biographer.
There is a touch of the gaiety of Charles Trenet and of René Clair’s early films; of the blues of his favorite singers Florel and Piaf.” But as Ashbery concludes, “In the end, the only fruitful comparison seems to be with Arthur Rimbaud, and not because Martory’s poetry resembles his, but because both are similar in resembling no one else.” Martory collaborated with Francis Wishart on a volume of text and etchings entitled Père Lachaise in the seventies, and Wishart also created art for a posthumous collaboration, Oh, Lac / Oh, Lake, in 2008.
Schuyler's poem "Letter to a Friend: Who Is Nancy Daum" refers to an Alex Katz portrait of Martory with a pipe, in the collection of the Flow Chart Foundation.