Ants on the Melon: A Collection of Poems (Modern Library (Paperback)) - Softcover

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

Virginia Hamilton Adair was born in 1913 in New York City. Educated at Kimberly, Mt. Holyoke, Radcliffe, and the University of Wisconsin, she taught briefly at Wisconsin, William & Mary, and Pomona College, and for many years at California Polytechnic University at Pomona. She passed away on September 16, 2004.