Ants on the Melon: A Collection of Poems [Paperback]

Virginia Hamilton Adair (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 16, 1999

"        Virginia Adair speaks directly and unaffectedly, in an accent stripped of mannerism and allusion. Ants on the Melon exhibits enough formal variety, freshness, and intelligence to confirm, at one stroke, that Ms. Adair is a poet of accomplishment and originality."
--Brad Leithauser, The New York Times Book Review

"        Extraordinarily moving. Her voice is clear, assured, varied, and utterly her own."
--A. Alvarez, The New York Review of Books

"        The rhyme is ingenious, the humor saucy and unsparing, and the author clearly takes a delight in perversity, in an inversion of the expected."
--Alice Quinn, The New Yorker

"        How bright and unmuddled and unaffected and unswerving these poems are. There's such aplomb, no faking, such a true hard edge. They never miss."
--Alice Munro

"        Adair writes with a thinking heart's and a feeling mind's unusual clarity. Here is a sensual, wise, precise, amazing voice."
--Sharon Olds

Virginia Hamilton Adair is America's most widely read and respected serious poet. Ants on the Melon has already become a landmark in the nation's
literary history, and the advent of this paperback edition guarantees that her great gifts will be recognized and appreciated by an even larger audience.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

There is a fairy tale quality to the appearance of this book of poems by Virginia Hamilton Adair. Although she has been publishing poetry for six decades, this is the first collection from a writer who is now in her 80s and is blind due to glaucoma. But for all that she has been through (including the suicide of her husband, historian Douglass Adair, some 30 years ago), there is a modesty and wryness to her work. From "Ants on a Melon," the poem that gives this collection its name, to "The Dark Hole," which tackles Hiroshima and the atom bomb as its subject, her poems are always finely wrought and highly original. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

The appearance of a first collection by a poet now blind and in her 83rd year must be accounted a triumph, and it is hardly to be wondered at if the result is a little uneven. Adair, recently profiled in The New Yorker, works with equal daring in free verse and more traditional forms; her subjects include social and religious commentary, but her principal theme is ordinary experience and its resistance to facile interpretation. It is a shame that most of the poems are not dated: given the variousness of her style and the reminiscences about poets as different as William Carlos Williams, Hart Crane, and May Sarton, it would have been useful to know more about her development over more than 60 years of writing. Some poems might have been excluded, but in her better poems-the memory-pictures of "The Grandmothers" or "One Ordinary Evening," the visionary topographies of "Blackened Rings" or "In Dublin's Fair City, 1963"-there is a free ingenuousness not often heard in contemporary writing. Much of Adair's work should appeal to nonspecialists as well as to poets; recommended for most collections.
Graham Christian, Andover-Harvard Theological Lib., Cambridge, Mass.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 176 pages
• Publisher: Modern Library; Modern Library ed edition (March 16, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375752293
• ISBN-13: 978-0375752292
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.2 x 8.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #178,430 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good earthy, practical poetry, May 10, 2000

By 

Angela Belt - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ants on the Melon: A Collection of Poems (Paperback)

I'm a literary dilletante and I admit it. I picked up this book because of its swell cover and title.

Upon skimming it in the bookstore, I was hooked. Poems about life, without sappy metaphor or tricky construction. Good earthy, practical poetry. Such breadth of matter, such depth of understanding. I felt that I'd met a poet of substance.

Let's leave it at this, Adair nudged me into reading more poetry, more often.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars If Emily had a daughter...., June 14, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Ants on the Melon: A Collection of Poems (Hardcover)

It's always unfair to compare one writer to another, but if you love Emily Dickinson, then Adair's book is for you. Succinct, masterful use of the language. I loved this collection. Buy it!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Treasure, September 5, 2008

By 

J. Scott Shipman (Annandale, VA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ants on the Melon: A Collection of Poems (Paperback)

I bought this book when it was released and it became immediately a favorite. Mrs. Adair's clear voice and evocative prose pleases again and again. Great, accessible, "modern" poetry---what a pleasure! Highly recommended.