CACrown ArchivesThe cinema collection
Menu
Research dossier · People & Ideas

Harry Humes

American writer

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMay 17, 2026
Entity authorityQ5669879 ↗
Source-derived summary

Harry Humes (June 5, 1935 – April 4, 2025) was an American poet, short-story writer, academic and editor.

Early life and education

Humes was born on June 5, 1935, in Girardville, Pennsylvania. He joined the United States Army in 1958. He graduated from Bloomsburg State College in 1964, and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, with a Master of Fine Arts in 1967.

Career

Humes taught at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania from 1968 to 1999.

His work has appeared in West Branch, Antaeus, Gettysburg Review, Massachusetts Review, Poetry, Poetry Northwest, Prairie Schooner, Tar River Poetry, and The Virginia Quarterly Review. He also was editor of Yarrow and Stone Country Poetry Journal. His first poetry collection, Winter Weeds, was published in his 40s, in 1983.

Death

Humes died on April 4, 2025, at the age of 89.

Awards

Devins Award, from the University of Missouri Press

Theodore Roethke Poetry Prize, Poetry Northwest

1998 National Poetry Series, for Butterfly Effect

1990 National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellowship

Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grants

2007 Keystone Chapbook Competition, for “Underground Singing”

Works

Man with a Yellow Pail Archived June 10, 2009, at the Wayback Machine, Greensboro Review, Spring 2005]

Flocking Archived July 15, 2010, at the Wayback Machine, Beloit Poetry Journal

Winter Weeds.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Harry Humes” is american writer. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Harry, Humes and American, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewStrongest as a route into the people, institutions and dated events that shaped the subject’s public record. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1935, 2025, 1958, 1964—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1935-06-05. For this dossier, Harry, Humes and American is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “american writer” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5669879. VIAF identifies the subject as 111554970. The Library of Congress control number is n82091219. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1935, 2025, 1958 and 1964.

Critical limits

Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Harry Humes”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Harry Humes primary sources, Harry Humes archive and Harry research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Harry Humes”?
  2. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
  3. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Harry Humes” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.