Exit Amor

Adair, Virginia Hamilton

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Annotated by:
Coulehan, Jack
  • Date of entry: Mar-02-1999
  • Last revised: Aug-21-2006

Summary

You went out with the turning tide --Addressing her dead husband, the poet mourns the fact that he has thrown out "the bound volumes of our years . . . . " She asks why did he end his own life, "What dark eye smiled from the bore?" But no answer is forthcoming; she must simply live with the loss and endure it.

Commentary

This poem is from the remarkable first collection published by Adair at the age of 83. While she had written and published individual poems through most of her life, she had never chosen to collect them and attempt publication, until urged to do so by the poet Robert Mezey, who wrote the "Afterword" to Ants on the Melon. The book includes a series of poems (like this one) on her husband’s suicide in 1968 (see One Ordinary Evening in this database).

Primary Source

Ants on the Melon

Publisher

Random House

Place Published

New York

Edition

1996