Helen Adam (1909-1993)
"When I write I am not thinking of an audience. I just sort of get caught up in the ballad...to me poetry is a terrific force. If you don't write for its own sake, you are not a writer." [1]
According to the forward in her first book of poems, published when she was 14, Helen Adam spoke in rhyme to her dolls as a child. [2] By the time she was 20, three books of her poetry had been published. Her books were praised, but she was regarded with suspicion by her more "superstitious" compatriots of Scotland of the time who speculated at her being a "reincarnated bard [or] a witch's changeling." [3] Indeed, her own interest in magic and the occult are recurrent themes in her work. [4]
Adam's predilection for rhyme and ballad form made her an unlikely compatriot of avant-garde poetry of early 1950's San Francisco. [5] But, she was an influential poet of the place and time. Born December 2, 1909 in Glasgow, Scotland, Helen Adam was older than other poets active in the San Francisco Renaissance. She moved to America in 1939 with her mother and sister. [6] After living in Connecticut and New York, they settled in San Francisco in 1949. [7] There she befriended Robert Duncan, Jack Spicer and Madeline Gleason. Robert Duncan cited Adam's recitation of William Blake's Songs of Innocence and of Experience as a pivotal influence in his own poetic development. [8]
Adam reviled her youthful work calling it "dreadful doggerel." [9] The ballad suited Adam's interest in the narrative and the occult. When asked by Allen Ginsberg, "what is a ballad now?" Adam replied, "it's a story poem, usually chanted, by wandering minstrels, who go from town to town, and often the audience would join in or add verse of their own...some [ballads] are very practical, but they are in and out of the supernatural world all the time." [10]
After success with San Francisco's Burning, a play she co-wrote with her sister Pat, Adam and her sister moved back to New York City to present the play off-off-off Broadway in 1964. [11] Adam relied on sister, and after Pat's death in 1986, Adam became a recluse. [12] Helen Adam died September 19, 1993.
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Text of Poems
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The Last Secret
http://web.archive.org/web/20070526061652/http://www.levity.com/digaland/adam...
Last Words of her Lover
http://books.google.com/books?id=vnjTmEsXJwcC&pg=PA9&dq=helen+adam+po...
Margaretta's Rime
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Adam
The Chestnut Treee
http://writing.upenn.edu/library/Adam-Helen_Selected.html#chestnut
A Tale Best Forgotten
http://writing.upenn.edu/library/Adam-Helen_Selected.html#tale
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References & Notes
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[1] Brenda Knight, Women of the Beat Generation: The Writers, Artisits, and Muses at the Heart of a Revolution, Conari Press, 1998 page 12
[2]& [3] Brenda Knight, page 9
[4] William Thomas Lawlor, Beat Culture: Lifestyles, Icons, and Impact, ABC-CLIO, 2005, page 1
[5] see Kristen Prevallet, The Worm Queen Emerges: Helen Adam and the Forgotten Ballad Tradition, in Girls Who Wore Black, Edited by Ronna Johnson, Nancy M. Grace Rutgers university Press, 2002, page 25
[6] Kristen Prevallet, Introduction to A Helen Adam Reader, National Poetry Foundation, Orono, Maine 2007, page 12
[7] Kristen Prevallet, Adam Reader, page 14
[8]Brenda Knight, page 11 (see also Prevallet, Adam Reader, p.18-19)
[9] Kristen Prevallet, Adam Reader, page 10
[10] Allen Ginsberg and Helen Adam, On the Ballad: June 11, 1976, from Ann Waldman(editor,) Civil Disobediences: Poetics and Politics in Action, Coffee House Press, 2004, page 178-180
[11] Brenda Knight, page 12
[12] Kristen Prevallet, Adam Reader, page 55
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Of Interest:
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Helen Adam performing "Cheerless Junkie Song"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9b7RhTYUKE
Kristen Prevallet, Helen Adam's Sweet Company (includes a gallery of Adam's collages)
http://www.heelstone.com/meridian/adam4.html
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3:02
Poetry Spots: Helen Adam reads "Deep In The Subway"by bobholmanpoet175 views
This is quite wonderful. Thank you.
Idlinfarm 7 months ago