George Rolfe Humphries (November 20, 1894 in

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

– April 22, 1969 in

Redwood City, California Redwood City is a city on the San Francisco Peninsula in Northern California's Bay Area, approximately south of San Francisco, and northwest of San Jose. Redwood City's history spans its earliest inhabitation by the Ohlone people to being a ...

) was a

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral or writte ...

, translator, and teacher.

Life

An alumnus of Towanda High School, Humphries graduated cum laude from

Amherst College Amherst College ( ) is a private liberal arts college in Amherst, Massachusetts. Founded in 1821 as an attempt to relocate Williams College by its then-president Zephaniah Swift Moore, Amherst is the third oldest institution of higher educatio ...

in 1915. He was a first lieutenant machine gunner in

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

, from 1917 to 1918. In 1925, he married Helen Ward Spencer. He taught Latin in secondary schools in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

, New York City, and

Long Island Long Island is a densely populated island in the southeastern region of the U.S. state of New York (state), New York, part of the New York metropolitan area. With over 8 million people, Long Island is the most populous island in the United Sta ...

through 1957. From 1957 to 1965, he taught at

and at many poetry and creative writing workshops, including the

University of New Hampshire The University of New Hampshire (UNH) is a public land-grant research university with its main campus in Durham, New Hampshire. It was founded and incorporated in 1866 as a land grant college in Hanover in connection with Dartmouth College, mo ...

Writers' Conference and the

University of Colorado The University of Colorado (CU) is a system of public universities in Colorado. It consists of four institutions: University of Colorado Boulder, University of Colorado Colorado Springs, University of Colorado Denver, and the University of Co ...

Writers' Conference. A mentor to many poets, including Theodore Roethke. he counted among his literary friendships those with Louise Bogan, Edmund Wilson, and

Elizabeth Bishop Elizabeth Bishop (February 8, 1911 – October 6, 1979) was an American people, American poet and short-story writer. She was Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1949 to 1950, the Pulitzer Prize winner for Poetry in 1956, the N ...

. His work appeared in ''Harper's'' and ''The New Yorker'', Humphries may be best remembered for a notorious literary prank. Asked to contribute a piece to ''

Poetry Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings i ...

'' in 1939, he penned 39 lines containing an

acrostic An acrostic is a poem or other word composition in which the ''first'' letter (or syllable, or word) of each new line (or paragraph, or other recurring feature in the text) spells out a word, message or the alphabet. The term comes from the Fre ...

. The first letters of each line spelled out the message: " Nicholas Murray Butler is a horses ass." The editor printed an apology and Humphries was banned from the publication. The ban was lifted in 1941. His papers are held at Amherst College.

Spain

Like many American intellectuals, Humphries supported the Republican (left-wing) side in the

Spanish Civil War The Spanish Civil War ( es, Guerra Civil Española)) or The Revolution ( es, La Revolución, link=no) among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War ( es, Cuarta Guerra Carlista, link=no) among Carlists, and The Rebellion ( es, La Rebelión, lin ...

. He was the main organizer of a fund-raising volume, ''...And Spain Sings. Fifty Loyalist Ballads'' (1937). He translated two volumes of poetry of Federico García Lorca, a Spanish homosexual poet assassinated at the beginning of that war and an icon of what Spain lost. Because of controversy surrounding the text of the first of those books, Humphries' correspondence with

William Warder Norton William Warder Norton (September 17, 1891 – November 7, 1945) was a publisher and co-founder of W. W. Norton & Company. He grew up in Columbus, Ohio, moved to New York City and started an import-export business, met and married Margaret Dow ...

, Louise Bogan, and others was published by

Daniel Eisenberg Daniel is a masculine given name and a surname of Hebrew origin. It means "God is my judge"Hanks, Hardcastle and Hodges, ''Oxford Dictionary of First Names'', Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, , p. 68. (cf. Gabriel—"God is my strength"), ...

(es) (in Spanish translation). Eisenberg praises Humphries as a

textual scholar Textual scholarship (or textual studies) is an umbrella term for disciplines that deal with describing, transcribing, editing or annotating texts and physical documents. Overview Textual research is mainly historically oriented. Textual scholars s ...

Awards

* 1938

Guggenheim Fellow Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...

in creative writing * 1955 Academy of American Poets' Fellowship

Works

Poetry

* * * * * * * * * * *

Translations

* *
''Virgil's Aeneid'' via HathiTrust
* * * * *

Non-fiction

* * *

Musical

* ''Adelante'', 1939

Edition

* ''...And Spain Sings. Fifty

Loyalist Loyalism, in the United Kingdom, its overseas territories and its former colonies, refers to the allegiance to the British crown or the United Kingdom. In North America, the most common usage of the term refers to loyalty to the British Cro ...

Ballads''. New York, Vanguard Press, 1937. (With M. J. Benardete.) From WorldCat: ""Adaptations by Edna St. Vincent Millay, George Dillon, Genevieve Taggard, Muriel Rukeyser, William Carlos Williams, Jean Starr Untermeyer, Shaemas O'Sheel, Ruth Lechlitner, and other poets."—Dust jacket cover."

Reviews

W.H. Auden called Humphries' translation of Virgil's ''Aeneid'' "a service for which no public reward could be too great."

References

External links

* *
Rolfe Humphries page at The Poetry Foundation
{{DEFAULTSORT:Humphries, Rolfe 1894 births 1969 deaths Writers from Philadelphia American male poets Amherst College alumni Amherst College faculty Spanish Civil War 20th-century American poets Translators of Virgil 20th-century American male writers Members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters