{"product_id":"ants-on-the-melon-isbn-9780375752292","title":"Ants on the Melon","description":"\"        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.\"\u003cbr\u003e--Brad Leithauser, The New York Times Book Review\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"        Extraordinarily moving. Her voice is clear, assured, varied, and utterly her own.\"\u003cbr\u003e--A. Alvarez, The New York Review of Books\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"        The rhyme is ingenious, the humor saucy and unsparing, and the author clearly takes a delight in perversity, in an inversion of the expected.\"\u003cbr\u003e--Alice Quinn, The New Yorker\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"        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.\"\u003cbr\u003e--Alice Munro\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"        Adair writes with a thinking heart's and a feeling mind's unusual clarity. Here is a sensual, wise, precise, amazing voice.\"\u003cbr\u003e--Sharon Olds\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eVirginia 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 \u003cbr\u003eliterary history, and the advent of this paperback edition guarantees that her great gifts will be recognized and appreciated by an even larger audience.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 \u0026amp; Mary, and Pomona College, and for many years at California Polytechnic University at Pomona. She passed away on September 16, 2004.\u003cb\u003eNow You Need Me\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen the rains come\u003cbr\u003eyou remember\u003cbr\u003eour old closeness\u003cbr\u003ehumping along\u003cbr\u003ein the wet.\u003cbr\u003eYou grope the dark\u003cbr\u003ewhere I hang\u003cbr\u003emorosely\u003cbr\u003eby my crooked neck.\u003cbr\u003eYou pull off my cover\u003cbr\u003eshake me till my\u003cbr\u003eribs jingle\u003cbr\u003eand a moth flies out.\u003cbr\u003eYour hand reaches under\u003cbr\u003emy black skirt\u003cbr\u003eand up one leg\u003cbr\u003ethin as a cane\u003cbr\u003euntil I open wide\u003cbr\u003ewith a rusty squawk\u003cbr\u003ehovering above you\u003cbr\u003elike a dark and loving\u003cbr\u003eraven, said the old\u003cbr\u003eumbrella, her night\u003cbr\u003efull of holes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePeeling an Orange\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBetween you and a bowl of oranges I lie nude\u003cbr\u003eReading \u003cb\u003eThe World's Illusion\u003c\/b\u003e through my tears.\u003cbr\u003eYou reach across me hungry for global fruit,\u003cbr\u003eYour bare arm hard, furry and warm on my belly.\u003cbr\u003eYour fingers pry the skin of a naval orange\u003cbr\u003eReleasing tiny explosions of spicy oil.\u003cbr\u003eYou place peeled disks of gold in a bizarre pattern\u003cbr\u003eOn my white body. Rearranging, you bend and bite\u003cbr\u003eThe disks to release further their eager scent.\u003cbr\u003eI say \"Stop, you're tickling,\" my eyes still on the page.\u003cbr\u003eAromas of groves arise. Through green leaves\u003cbr\u003eGlow the lofty snows. Through red lips\u003cbr\u003eYour white teeth close on a translucent segment.\u003cbr\u003eYour face over my face eclipses \u003cb\u003eThe World's Illusion\u003c\/b\u003e.\u003cbr\u003ePulp and juice pass into my mouth from your mouth.\u003cbr\u003eWe laugh against each other's lips. I hold my book\u003cbr\u003eBehind your head, still reading, still weeping a little.\u003cbr\u003eYou say \"Read on, I'm just an illusion,\" rolling\u003cbr\u003eOver upon me soothingly, gently moving,\u003cbr\u003eSmiling greenly through long lashes. And soon\u003cbr\u003eI say \"Don't stop. Don't disillusion me.\"\u003cbr\u003eSnows melt. The mountain silvers into many a stream.\u003cbr\u003eThe oranges are golden worlds in a dark dream.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eOne Ordinary Evening\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLying entwined with you\u003cbr\u003eon the long sofa\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ethe hi-fi helping\u003cbr\u003eIsolde to her climax\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI was clipping\u003cbr\u003ethe coarse hairs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003efrom your ears\u003cbr\u003eand ruby nostrils\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ewhen you said, \"Music\u003cbr\u003efor cutting nose wires\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eand we shook so\u003cbr\u003ethe nailscissors nicked\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eyour gentle neck\u003cbr\u003eblood your blood\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI cleansed the place\u003cbr\u003ewith my tongue\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eand we clung tight\u003cbr\u003epelted with Teutonic cries\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003etill the player\u003cbr\u003elifted its little prick\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003efrom the groove\u003cbr\u003eall arias over\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eleaving us\u003cbr\u003ein post-Wagnerian sadness\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003elater that year\u003cbr\u003eyou were dead\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eby your own hand\u003cbr\u003eblood your blood\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI have never understood\u003cbr\u003eI will never understand.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAn Hour to Dance\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFor a while we whirled\u003cbr\u003eover the meadows of music\u003cbr\u003eour sadness put away in purses\u003cbr\u003estuffed into old shoes or shawls\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ethe children we never were\u003cbr\u003efrom cellars and closets\u003cbr\u003eattics and faded snapshots\u003cbr\u003ecame out to leap for love\u003cbr\u003eon the edge of an ocean of tears\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003elike a royal flotilla\u003cbr\u003eAlice's menagerie swam by\u003cbr\u003eno tale is endless\u003cbr\u003ethe rabbit opened his watch\u003cbr\u003emuttering late, late\u003cbr\u003etime to grow\u003cbr\u003eoldA sensibility of genius- -Time","brand":"Modern Library","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46301605036261,"sku":"NP9780375752292","price":15.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780375752292.jpg?v=1767721670","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/ants-on-the-melon-isbn-9780375752292","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}