John Hall Wheelock

John Hall Wheelock (September 9, 1886 – March 22, 1978) was an American poet. A descendant of Eleazar Wheelock, founder of Dartmouth College, his parents were William Efner Wheelock and Emily Charlotte Hall, John Hall Wheelock was born in Far Rockaway, New York, and brought up in the neighborhood now occupied by Rockefeller Center. He summered in a family home on Long Island's South Fork, which provided inspiration for much of his work.

Wheelock's parents encouraged the reading and memorization of poetry, and told of the time when they had seen the great poet Walt Whitman, when John was a baby.

My father held me up on a ferryboat...and said: 'Do you see that man?' He turned my head... toward Whitman, who was standing in the bow of the boat, and he said, 'That is the great poet, Walt Whitman.' Apparently—as my father described it—I refused to look at him, and kept turning my head the other way. I have no memory of this great occasion, not being then equipped to receive the spirit of Walt Whitman, although I suppose for a moment his image was in my eyes.

Wheelock's published volume of Collected Works was awarded the Golden Rose by the New England Poetry Society in 1936, as the most distinguished contribution to American poetry of that year. For his work Poems Old and New he received the Ridgely Torrence Memorial Award in 1956, and the Borestone Mountain Poetry Award in 1957. In 1962 he won the Bollingen Prize; in 1965 the Signet Society Medal, Harvard University, for distinguished achievement in the arts. In 1972 he was awarded the Gold Medal by the Poetry Society of America for notable achievement in poetry.

The Bright Doom, Scribner, 1927 Collected Poems, 1911-1936, Scribner, 1936 Editor to Author: The Letters of Maxwell E. Perkins, 1950. (editor) Poems Old and New, Scribner, 1956 The Gardner and Other Poems, Scribner, 1961 What is Poetry?, Scribner, 1963 Dear Men and Women: New Poems, Scribner, 1966 By Daylight and in Dream: New and Collected Poems, 1904-1970, Scribner, 1970 In Love and Song: Poems, Scribner, 1971. Nirvana