Woden's Day

I said yesterday that I’d write about the poet Virginia Hamilton Adair. I keep my promises.

I said yesterday that I’d write about the poet Virginia Hamilton Adair. I keep my promises.

Virginia was 83 and blind from glaucoma when she, as they say, burst onto the scene in 1996 with a book called “Ants on the Melon.” Wary of publishing when she was younger, a poet named Robert Mezey got behind her work, sent some poems to “The New Yorker” and bingo! Alice Quinn liked them and pretty soon Virginia was relatively famous. At least in the Poetry world. She had her detractors but who doesn’t.

Bob Mezey was her Reader for a while. She didn’t see, so Bob would go to readings with her. Virginia would talk a bit, and Bob would read a poem of hers. At some point he asked me to take over for a while. Bob and I were friends and he liked what I was writing though he was a formalist and I - brace yourself for an understatement - was not.

For a few months and maybe four evenings, I met Virginia at one poetry site or another. A friend of hers helped her into the venue, got her situated on the stage or behind the podium. And - something like her shadow - I followed along. Mostly we had chairs side by side, mine a bit further back than hers.

She’d chat, , give the poem’s title, then turn to me and I’d read. Every time, just before I started, Virginia put her hand on my forearm. When I finished, the hand would return to her lap. It always remind me of the turntable/needle connection.

At the end of the reading — maybe 30 people — she’d smile and before the applause died away she’d turn to me and I’d take a small step forward.

Her work is worth a long look. Lots of it on the Poetry Foundation site.

See you tomorrow.