Tufts University - Jumbo Yearbook (Medford, MA)

Page 6 text:

IN ME MORI AM i John Holmes, poet, critic, teacher, born January 6, 1904 in Somerville, Massachusetts, received his undergraduate education at Tufts University. After a year of graduate work at Harvard University, he be¬ came an instructor in English at Lafayette College and two years later came to Tufts where he was to spend his life as a teacher and friend of both students and faculty. John Holmes, poet, in his eleven volumes, expressed a poetic voice distinctly his own. The powerful self- expression of a New England poet concerned with human relationships, tuned to the rise and fall of his speaking voice, contains an unpretentious simplicity and a profound, sensitive awareness of both the rare and the everyday. For his abilities he received the Golden Rose of th’ New England Poetry Club in 1938, the William Rose Benet Memorial Prize in 1958, and be¬ came a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1962. He was Phi Beta Kappa poet five times at four universities and was conferred the hon¬ orary degree of Doctor of Literature by Tufts in 1962. John Holmes, critic, contributed to such literary magazines as The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, The Saturday Review, The Yale Review, and Harper’s. Through his writings he gained both praise and close friendships with many contemporary poets, such as MacLeish, McCord, Frost, and Ciardi, a former stu¬ dent of Doctor Holmes. John Holmes, teacher, through an effortless, gentle manner, communicated by osmosis. He taught, not in the formal tradition of lectures, exams, and papers, but with a deep sense of feeling for his subject. Never osten¬ tatious, always sympathetic, thoughtful, profound, he was more a friend telling of his experiences in a world too often callous, too often unfriendly. A quality of quiet . ' f ; 1 iv y ; JL £a ■ • 7 tl RKk ■ pv- • iisAWS! ■ v: - j . intensity gave to his students a sense of support, never obvious, but still, very real. A conversationalist who stimulated others to express, to think, he begot loyalty from many because he gave it to so many. And to Tufts, his gratitude, his love—we can give to his memory only a meager return—to you, John Holmes, poet, critic, teacher: “How you must love this place!” My heart stood still And ached to think how much 1 love this Hill.