Joe Park Poe

Joe Park Poe, Professor Emeritus of Classical Studies at Tulane University, died on Saturday, May 23, 2026, at the age of 89. He was born on July 15, 1936, in Forrest City, Arkansas, and spent most of his childhood in Little Rock. Predeceased by his parents, Samuel E. Poe and Eloise Thomas Poe, as well as by his daughter Martha Elizabeth Poe (Betsy), Joe is survived by his sister Beth Poe Kissling, his daughter Amy E. Poe, Betsy’s five children, the oldest of whom, Jonathan Becnel, lives in New Orleans, and his wife of 45 years, Elizabeth Wilson Poe (Beth).

After earning his A.B. from Columbia College, his A.M. from Cornell University, and his Ph.D. from Columbia University, Joe taught for two years at UT Austin and for one at UC Berkeley. In early September 1965, he arrived in New Orleans “with Hurricane Betsy” (as he put it) to begin what proved to be a distinguished 47-year career as a faculty member in the Classics Department at Tulane. He retired in 2012.

As a scholar, Joe was recognized internationally among Classicists for the breadth and originality of his work. He published important monographs and articles on Greek drama, Latin elegiac poetry, the Aeneid, Senecan tragedy, and Roman topography.

Joe’s teaching style was exemplary of the “old school.” He always wore a coat and tie when he taught and never called a student by their first name. He painstakingly explained ablative absolutes, gerunds and gerundives, passive periphrastics, and futures less vivid as though such concepts really mattered, and to him they did. He was demanding but compassionate, serious but funny. He cultivated an atmosphere of mutual respect in the classroom, which made his students want to do their best.

When Joe married Beth on January 9, 1981, a new life began for both of them. The first thing they did was to give themselves as a wedding present a tandem bicycle, which they used as their primary means of transportation for years, often pedaling from uptown New Orleans to the French Quarter and beyond.

Joe loved the times that he and Beth spent together in Europe, especially the thirty consecutive summers and two academic years that they lived in Göttingen, a university town in northern Germany, where he did some of his best research, heard and spoke German around the clock, and made lasting friendships.

During their summers abroad, they regularly set aside a week or two to make a road trip through southern France. With Joe driving and Beth navigating, it is remarkable that they reached any of their destinations. That said, their itinerary was flexible: they were simply on the lookout for the nearest town with a Romanesque church, a vineyard, a modest hotel with restaurant, and a population of fewer than nine hundred.

Again and again, Joe faced adversity with grace. He was, arguably, the only person who, after Katrina, honestly enjoyed living in a FEMA trailer for eighteen months with his wife and two cats. He accepted with equanimity the irreversible physical and cognitive impairments caused by the strokes he suffered in the spring of 2017. Perhaps, most challenging for him, he did not lose hope in 2020, during the Pandemic, when for six months he was in isolation and separated from Beth.

Until the very end, Joe remained full of life and joy, in large measure because of the loving care he received from the nurses and CNAs at St. Anna’s at Lambeth, where he was a resident for more than eight years. To everyone on the staff there, past and present, please know that Joe was grateful for all you did for him. Thanks to you, his dignity was never compromised.

There will be a memorial service for Joe at St. Charles Ave. Presbyterian Church, 1545 State Street, on Wednesday, June 10, at 2:00 PM, with visitation beforehand, from 12:30 to 1:45 PM. In lieu of flowers, please consider making a donation to the Lambeth House Foundation, Second Harvest Food Bank, or a charity of your choice.