James Humphrey papers (Ms.2014.013)

Biographical note

Although he was best known as a writer of free verse poetry, James Humphrey was also an abstract artist, teacher, and advocate for victims of child abuse. His writings reflect his love of sports, especially baseball, his struggle with ill health, and his lifelong effort to overcome the effects of severe abuse when he was a child.

Humphrey was born in Sioux City, Iowa, on February 20, 1939. After his parents divorced in 1944, his mother remarried. At the age of sixteen he left his abusive parents, who were then living in Arizona, and returned to Iowa to finish high school. After being denied admission because he was not living with a legal guardian, he enlisted in the United States Air Force. He was medically discharged after one year.

Humphrey married in 1959 but divorced a year later. During this time he worked at a variety of jobs, including construction, meat packing and dealing poker. He also began a self-taught writing apprenticeship. In 1965 he met Norma Van Vooren in the apartment building where they both lived in Waterloo, Iowa. They married on Feburary 28, 1966. The following December their son Saroyan was born, named after the writer William Saroyan. When Norma finished college in 1968 she accepted a position as an assistant librarian at Marshalltown Community College in Iowa. Humphrey taught his first poetry writing workshops and was the founding editor of a contemporary poetry journal titled captain may i. Ted Berrigan (1934-1983) was its guest poet. By this time Humphrey had written over six hundred completed poems and thirty short stories in their final draft.

In September of 1969 the family moved to East Falmouth, Massachusetts. Humphrey's first volume of poetry, Argument for Love, was published in 1970 by Kendall Press in Falmouth. During this time Humphrey taught and read his poetry at schools and colleges around the country, aided by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. In 1975 the Attleboro, Massachusetts school system, where Norma was employed as a librarian, asked Humphrey to write the "Teaching Poetry in the Schools" curriculum. His teaching plan was adopted by other school districts in New England. Because he could not get a permanent teaching position without a college degree, Humphrey enrolled at Rhode Island College and later transferred to Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. Although he began as a special student, he was soon accepted as a degree candidate. In 1977 he graduated with distinction with a Bachelor of Arts and a Masters degree in Creative Writing. He also founded the poetry journal AnyArt and continued to teach poetry and creative writing in Massachusetts schools.

From 1977 to 1980 Humphrey worked as a promotional representative for the Valvoline Oil Company in exchange for its sponsorship of his son Saroyan's quarter midget racing car, which is a car designed for five to fifteen year old drivers. In the summer of 1981 the family moved to Woodland Park, Colorado, after Humphrey was offered a teaching position at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs (UCCS). Because of budget cuts the offer was cancelled. The family moved a year later to North Carolina, where Norma had accepted a position in the library at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. In 1986 Humphrey founded Poets Alive! Press in order to publish his work. His son assisted with the book designs, illustrations and photography. The family moved to Yonkers, New York, in July 1988, again following Norma as she advanced in her career.

During 1994 and 1995 Humphrey worked in a privately run homeless shelter for abused children in Westchester County, New York. In April 2000 Humphrey donated two of his works, Paying the Price and In Pursuit of Honor, to the library of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York. In 2006 his last volume of poetry, Naked: Poems Selected and New, 1969-2006, was published. He read publicly from this volume at the Yonkers Public Library on April 7, 2006. His health had deteriorated so badly during the last years of his life that eventually he was no longer able to write. He was, however, able to paint. His show of abstract art opened at the Secrets Gallery in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, on May 3, 2008. Humphrey passed away on May 21, 2008 after suffering cardiac arrest. From June to October of 2008 his poem "Today" waved on a banner displayed in Hastings-on-Hudson.

Between 1970 and 2006 Humphrey published seventeen books of poetry. He donated copies of each of them to the Brown University Library.

The James Humphrey Trust was created after his death to make Humphrey's legacy available and to manage the assets in a way he would have approved. The Trust created an audio compilation of Humphrey reading early published and unpublished poems called Argument for Love, the Poetry Readings, 1969-1974. The profits earned from the sale of this compact disc and from his last published book are being donated to Prevent Child Abuse/America.