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John Hall Wheelock Edit Profile

critic editor poet

John Hall Wheelock was an American poet, critic and editor.

Background

John Hall Wheelock was born in Far Rockaway, Queens, N. Y. , the son of William Efner Wheelock and Emily Charlotte Hall. Among his ancestors was Eleazar Wheelock, founder of Dartmouth College. Wheelock's father was a prosperous physician, a botanist, a lawyer, and a substitute French horn player for the New York Philharmonic. Wheelock was to write one of his finest poems, "The Gardener, " about his father and his plantings, which Wheelock took to be artistic creations of strict order. It was his mother who introduced the boy to poetry, urging him to memorize a poem a week. All his life he could quote substantial blocks of poetry. He knew all his own poems by heart, and at his public readings he rarely consulted a book.

Education

John Hall Wheelock graduated from Harvard University in 1908, and was class poet.

Career

Wheelock, who had one of the longest careers in American letters (his first book was published in 1905 and his last in 1978), had early brushes with literary greatness. In an interview in The Paris Review he stated he had seen Walt Whitman, whom his father had pointed out as the great poet stood in the bow of a New York ferry boat. But since Wheelock was a baby at the time, he carried no memory of the occasion. Wheelock also touched the sleeve of Algernon Swinburne, an occasion he would not forget, since as a college student in 1906 he had made the pilgrimage to "The Pines" in London for a glimpse of his poetic hero. Wheelock loved the ocean. He was born near the Atlantic Ocean, and his father's medical practice enabled the family to afford both a residence in Manhattan and a home in East Hampton, on the South Fork of Long Island. As an adult Wheelock retreated there, to the house to which he returned for over eight decades, spending part of each summer. He walked the beaches, mentally composing poems that he later wrote down. The Atlantic Ocean appears in many of them, as does eastern Long Island, to which he referred by its Native American name, "Bonac. " Wheelock's first published poem - a translation from Ovid - appeared in the paper of the Morristown School (N. J. ) in 1900. He enrolled at Harvard in 1904 and became a friend of Van Wyck Brooks, also a student. In 1905 they anonymously published Verses by Two Undergraduates, which sold about half a dozen copies at twenty-five cents each. It later became a valuable collectors' item. Another Harvard friend was Maxwell Perkins. Wheelock edited the Harvard Monthly, was named class poet, and graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1908. His father urged him to continue studies toward a Ph. D in literature, with an academic career in mind. Wheelock studied at the University of Göttingen in 1909 and the University of Berlin in 1910. He earned no degree but acquired a few fashionable dueling scars. The only doctorate he received was an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Otterbein College, decades later. Wheelock's first job was as a clerk in Scribner's Book Store on Fifth Avenue in New York City, a position he held from 1911 until 1926. In 1911 he published his second book, The Human Fantasy. It brought him recognition as a considerable poet at the age of twenty-five. His Harvard friend Maxwell Perkins had become an editor at Charles Scribner's Sons, the publisher whose offices were located above the bookstore. Perkins urged Wheelock to leave the store for an editorial opening upstairs. In 1932, Wheelock became a director, and later that year he was elected secretary of the corporation. Eventually he replaced Perkins as editor in chief. In all he remained with Scribners from 1911 until 1957, when he retired. Wheelock once described editorial work as the "dullest, hardest, most exciting, exasperating and rewarding of perhaps any job in the world. " Among the authors Wheelock edited were Thomas Wolfe, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Allan Nevins, Charles A. Lindbergh, and James Truslow Adams. He also edited the poet Louise Bogan until she imagined a quarrel between them and took her work elsewhere. When he was in his late sixties, Wheelock created a publishing innovation by establishing the Scribner Poets of Today series. Rather than publishing individual volumes of verse, he packaged three poets per volume. He published eight such collections, including twenty-four new poets, between 1954 and 1961. Among his discoveries were May Swenson, James Dickey, Louis Simpson, and Joseph Langland. He said of the series, "All my choices turned out well. " Influenced by Percy Shelley and Algernon Swinburne, Wheelock was a lyric poet of feeling. He died in New York City.

Achievements

  • He was highly honored during his lifetime. He received the Ridgely Torrence Memorial Award (1956), the Borestone Mountain Award (1957), the Gold Medal of the Poetry Society of America (1972), and the Bollingen Prize (1962), which he shared with Richard Eberhart. Allen Tate called him "one of the best poets in English. " Wheelock published fourteen books of poetry, an insightful study of the genre titled What Is Poetry? (1963), and several editions and translations, the most important being Editor to Author: The Letters of Maxwell Perkins (1950).

Works

All works

Views

Quotations: He recognized that his work was considered unfashionable. "Feeling has been rather played down by modern poets, partly as a result of what the world has been through with its depressions and wars. The nerve of feeling has been exhausted, " he said in an interview.

Membership

He was a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.

Personality

The Human Fantasy brought Wheelock more than critical attention. It brought the personal attentions of Sara Teasdale, famous poet of countless love lyrics. She wrote Wheelock letters, began to visit Scribners daily, and declared her love. Apparently Wheelock, who was gangling and had protruding ears, was involved with another woman. He also was timid.

Quotes from others about the person

  • In a letter to Harriet Monroe, Teasdale described him as "the shyest person I ever knew. "

Connections

Wheelock did not marry until August 25, 1940 - when he was fifty-four. He and his wife, Phyllis de Kay, had no children.

Father:
William Efner Wheelock

Mother:
Emily Charlotte Hall

Spouse:
Phyllis de Kay