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

Virginia Hamilton Adair (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 30, 1996

Already singled out by The New York Times and the subject of a feature in The New Yorker, Virginia Adair has, after decades of shunning book publication, decided to collect eighty of her best poems in a volume that will surely be hailed as among the most accomplished works of our time.

Ants on the Melon includes poems that concern the author's childhood, that explore sensuality in candid terms, that starkly treat her husband's suicide and her own blindness, and that explore both her own emotional landscape and the universal mysteries of the human condition. Technically brilliant, using strict, classical prosody, yet entirely modern in sensibility, Virginia Adair's poetry will play a central role in the ongoing American poetry renaissance.

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.

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.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 158 pages
• Publisher: Random House; 1st edition (April 30, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679448810
• ISBN-13: 978-0679448815
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,843,263 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.