The youngest of four brothers, with two younger sisters (Shirley and Maizie) James was born to Ervin and Ethel Holmes[2] and raised in a small American farm in Collins, Iowa.

In 1948, after obtaining two degrees, one in English and one in History, he continued his studies at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, one of the well-known Ivy League Schools, where the following year he became a research doctor.

In 1949 Holmes interrupted his studies to work as a Fulbright exchange teacher in a Quaker school in the Eerde Castle, near Ommen, in the Netherlands.

To Holmes, the relationship with Van Marle soon became something highly important that brought him to making the choice never to go back to the United States, and to move permanently to Amsterdam.

For the next two years, Holmes attended Nico Donkersloot's Dutch language course at the Universiteit van Amsterdam, and published in 1951 his first poetry translation.

When the Literary Science faculty of the Universiteit van Amsterdam decided in 1964 to create a Department of Translation Studies, Holmes was invited to contribute as an associate professor.

One of the most extraordinary examples of Holmes' bravery was his translation of the very long poetic piece "Awater [nl]" by Martinus Nijhoff, a work that gained attention both in the Netherlands and abroad.

His masterpiece was, undoubtedly, the translation of the impressive collection Dutch Interior, a considerable anthology of post-war poetry, published in 1984 in New York by the Columbia University Press.

In the Netherlands, Holmes always felt welcome, not only because of the vast array of acquaintances that had come from his works as a poet and translator, but especially from the many friendships born in the gay spheres of Amsterdam.

His American accent and the fact that he continued making mistakes with the Dutch definite article was no reason for him to be considered a foreigner or treated as such.

After many years it was still possible to find posters stuck on bus stops, near the entrances of apartment blocks, in streetlights, on gates or level crossings.