Poetry is autobiography for some writers, transposed memories of voyages both interior and across time's span. Think of Wordsworth, seemingly cursed with total recall, or Whitman with his barbaric yawps about Brooklyn and the Union dead. Or consider Virginia Hamilton Adair, whose Ants on the Melon (Random House; 158 pages; $21) may prove to be the year's finest volume of verse.
Ants on the Melon is something of a miracle: the first book of poetry by an 83-year-old woman, sightless now from glaucoma, who resides at a retirement community in Claremont, California. But this slim volume distills a lifetime of writing....