Longtime College Park resident Reed Whittemore was a poet, but just as importantly, he was an ambassador of poetry.

As a sophomore in college in the 1930s, he started a literary magazine that published the likes of e.e. cummings, William Carlos Williams and Ezra Pound before folding in 1953.

When the magazine ran low on funds, Whittemore often paid the poets with fine Italian ties owned by his roommate.

He also served — twice — as the poet laureate of the United States, poet laureate of Maryland, literary editor of The New Republic, biographer of famous poets and a professor at the University of Maryland from 1967 to 1984.

Due to his long ties to the area, the city of College Park will add a commemorative marker on the Trolley Trail on Wednesday, the 100th anniversary of his birth.

As a poet, Whittemore was known for short verses about life marked by a mordant wit and a conversational tone. One reviewer described him memorably as a man who “has been all kinds of places, yet shuffles along in an old pair of tennis shoes and khaki pants, with his hands in his pockets.” 

Members of his family and representatives of the city and the university gave a brief remark at the marker’s unveiling, which was held Wednesday at the Albion Road plaza of the Trolley Trail near the entrance of Riverdale Park Station.