These collected poems of John A. Holmes reflect the contents of the poetry manuscripts contained in the John A. Holmes Collection at the Tufts University Digital Collections and Archives. It includes both previously published poems as well as never before published works.

The bulk of the material dates from 1940 to 1961. The poems are included in the order in which they were cataloged in the collection. The arrangement of the poems is generally chronological, with the earliest poems grouped at the beginning and later poems following, but because many poems were not dated, this arrangement is imprecise.

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected, but otherwise the poems are as found in the collection.