When I made the discovery of Mrs. Adair's poetry by her first
volume Ants on the melon, I quickly turned to her third release Living on fire, only to find the high expectations set by that first installment to be confirmed. Virginia Hamilton Adair provides a wonderful celebration of the joys and tragedies of her life. She reflects on love in its many guises, music, old age, her own blindness, the Mojave, the Mississippi (or Nature in general), the transcience of things and DGA (her late husband Douglass Graybill Adair), once again with the wonderful clarity and directness which characterized Ants on the melon.

It's difficult to pick a favourite. But I certainly loved it how she makes fun of her Victorian fellow-poet Robert Browning and composer Eric Satie (her fine humour is never absent). Especially touching are her poems about love. And I think those about her blindness are heartwrenching, as well as the more darker poems in the DGA section. Though she's wonderfully tender and funny in the joyous poems which celebrate her love for her late husband.

Virginia Hamilton Adair indeed lives on fire and by her poetry she lights fires.

The third book by V. H. Adair is in the style of her first, 'Ants on the Melon'. The solar eclipse on the cover is evocative of the light verse of sheet music of the early 20th century , masking the alternative light and dark verse inside. The reader is drawn into the humorous couplings of guinea pigs, to be left viewing their corpses strewn along the street. The seduction continues in V. H. Adair's verse, and the reader is never disappointed.

New Daughters Of The Oracle: The Return Of Female Prophetic Power In Our Time is drawn from Virginia Adair's worldwide trip to learn as much as she could about people, especially women, who profess to be psychic. Filled with condensed interviews, exotic practices, and human experience in such varied nations as Italy, England, Hong Kong, Greece, and much more, Highly recommended for women's studies, metaphysical studies, and alternative medicine reading lists and reference collections, New Daughters Of The Oracle is an eye-opening look at the intercultural belief in human psychic powers and those who claim to practice this gift.

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.

Virginia Hamilton Adair was raised in an environment which seemed truly perfect for a (budding) poet. She was born as the daughter of Robert Browning Hamilton (a poet himself). Her parents suffused her with poetry and gave her loving encouragement. Though for certain reasons she began only to publish them as a book collection in her eighties.

And I for one am very glad to have discovered her! Mrs. Adair doesn't mince words and speaks in a direct, assured and clear voice, so no mannerisms here. She takes a refreshing and intelligent look at things. I do love her fine and wicked humour.

These poems cover a wide range of subjects. The experience of a long life is distilled here. Heartwrenching are many of the poems in the Exit Amor section, because in 1968 her husband committed suicide. Her grief and despair found it's voice in her poetry (One Ordinary Evening, Dark Lines, The Ruin, Exit Amor, The Year After or Coronach).

So try out Ants on the Melon and you'll discover a wonderful poet!

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!

Mrs. Adair has produced a charming and illuminating volume of poems with a spiritual theme. Most are very personal and deeply evocative, and her voice is clearly one of strong and fulfilling belief in Christ. The brevity of the volume makes it a welcome read, again and again.