Baker was an English professor and poet-in-residence at Wabash College for 34 years. His poetry was widely published in literary magazines and anthologies, and he was the author of seven books. He was a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Writing Fellowship, and he received the Pushcart Prize, the Borestone Mountain Prize, and a Pulitzer Prize nomination.
Baker was named Milligan Professor of English at Wabash College and received the McLain-MacTurnan Award for distinguished lifetime teaching in 1967. He was honored by Wabash as an honorary alumnus in 1987.
After his retirement from Wabash, Baker moved to Brewster, on Cape Cod, where he taught courses in poetry, Shakespeare’s sonnets, and the work of Emily Dickinson in several continuing education programs, as well as teaching for several seasons in the Cape Cod Writers’ Conference. For 10 years he conducted a poetry workshop at the Brewster Ladies Library.
Baker graduated from Worcester’s (Mass.) Classical High School in 1941 and received A.B., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees from Brown University, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.
The evening will consist of poems and recollections from various friends and family members including Tobey Herzog, Tam Lin Neville, William Placher, Hall Peebles, Vic Powell, Alison Baker Rilling, and Herbert Stern.
The evening is free and a reception will follow in the Rogge Lounge in Baxter Hall.