THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, November 10, 1995 TAG: 9511080213
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 04B EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY GARY EDWARDS
CORRESPONDENT
LENGTH: Medium: 69 lines
Jason Lester Adkins rendered Edgar Allan Poe's classic poem, ``The Raven,'' in an eerily appropriate setting. A dozen candles flickered before him on the Virginia Beach Center for the Arts stage. With the house lights down, shadows danced across Adkins' face as he delivered the dark poem.
About 50 poetry lovers sat quietly, motionless and enthralled. Accomplished harpist Ericka Patillo provided accompaniment.
Adkins and fellow poet Robert Christin read poetic works of 19th century American and English poets. Adkins offered the works of the Americans; Christin, the English during the Sunday afternoon of poetry and music presented by the Great Neck Writers Group.
Calling poetry ``the oldest art,'' Adkins opened with works of the New England transcendentalist, Ralph Waldo Emerson. A brief biographical sketch of each preceded the reading.
As he read works from Emerson, Adkins offered the opinion that Emerson presaged modern physics.
``The message can not be separated from the messenger,'' said Adkins, alluding to German physicist Werner Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, about the interaction of the observer and the observed. Emerson sensed this in his poetry, Adkins said.
He also read from Poe's ``Annabelle Lee,'' and spoke of the darkness of the soul that Poe captured so lyrically. The poet looks inward and no one did so more hauntingly than Poe, Adkins said.
Christin then took the lectern and read from the works of William Wordsworth, one of the English Lake District poets. He recited the well-known line, ``The child is father to the man,'' from the poem, ``My Heart Leaps Up.''
The former Notre Dame and Ohio State professor continued, reading from the works of John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley and the Brownings, Elizabeth Barrett and Robert.
``Although he died at 26, Keats' work had already exceeded that of Milton and Chaucer at a similar age,'' Christin said.
Adkins returned to offer readings and comments about Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman. ``Emily Dickinson spoke of her poems as `shields against loneliness,' '' he said, telling the audience that the reclusive Dickinson spent most of her life in the writing room of her house in Amherst, Mass.
``Walt Whitman was surely the first true American poet, as Mark Twain was the first true American novelist,'' said Adkins of Whitman, who penned ``The Leaves of Grass'' in 1848 when he was 36. ``He was the epitome of 19th century American poetry.''
The program concluded with Adkins reading a poem of his own, ``Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, Va. on Nov. 11, 1994.'' Adkins wrote of wandering through the old burial ground, past Revolutionary and Civil War dead, on Veterans Day. MEMO: For information about the Great Neck Writers Group, call 340-2948.
ILLUSTRATION: Photos by GARY EDWARDS
Harpist Ericka Patillo performed at a reading of Edgar Allan Poe's
poem, ``The Raven.''
Jason Lester Adkins
Read poetic works for 50 poetry fans.
by CNB