Nick Virgilio

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Nicholas Anthony Virgilio (June 28, 1928–January 3, 1989) was an internationally recognized haiku poet who is credited with helping to popularize the Japanese style of poetry in the United States.

Virgilio was born in Camden, New Jersey on June 28, 1928, the first of three sons of Anthony Virgilio, an accomplished violinist, and Rose Alemi, a seamstress, and grew up in that city's Fairwiew section, where he lived much of his life.

He graduated from Camden High School, served in the Navy during World War II, received a bachelor of arts degree from Temple University in Philadelphia, and began his career as a radio announcer and, as "Nickaphonic Nick", worked as a disc jockey with Philadelphia's Jerry Blavat. He moved to Texas in the late 1950s to become a sports broadcaster.

Virgilio moved back to Camden following a devastating love affair in Texas [1] and discovered haiku in 1963 after taking out a book on haiku from the library at the Camden campus of Rutgers University. His first published haiku appeared in The American Haiku magazine in 1963, and it is estimated he wrote thousands during his 20-plus-year career. The death of his youngest brother Larry in the Vietnam War inspired some poignant and powerful haiku, and made his reputation as a haiku elegist. He is quoted by haiku author and book editor Cor Van Den Heuvel as saying he wrote haiku "to get in touch with the real."

my dead brother...
hearing his laugh
in my laughter

Virgilio always experimented with the haiku form, trying several innovative forms that were adopted by many other American haiku poets, including dropping the traditional 5-7-5 syllable count in favor of shorter forms. He included rhyme in his haiku along with the gritty reality of urban America. It was in 1985 that a collection of Nick's Selected Haiku was published. The second (expanded) edition appeared just months before his death and has been called one of the most influential single-author books in English-language haiku.

He became well known after a review on National Public Radio, and appeared often on that network as a guest commentator. He was a member of Camden's Sacred Heart Church and helped to found the Walt Whitman Center for the Arts and Humanities (now the Walt Whitman Arts Center), where he also served as its artistic director and poet-in-residence. Virgilio was a long-standing member of the Haiku Society of America and was the co-director of the First International Haiku Festival.

He died on 3 January 1989 of a heart attack while taping an interview for the CBS television program Nightwatch and is buried at Harleigh Cemetery in Camden.[2] His well-known "Lily" haiku is engraved upon his gravestone:

lily:
out of the water . . .
out of itself

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ A Life of the Poet, reprinted from the 1991 Nicholas Virgilio Memorial Book by Kathleen O'Toole and Dwight Wilson
  2. ^ Campbell, Douglas A. "MEMORIAL DEDICATED TO CAMDEN POET FRIENDS OF NICK VIRGILIO RAISED MONEY FOR THE MONUMENT. YESTERDAY THEY READ HAIKU AT HIS GRAVE.", The Philadelphia Inquirer, June 24, 1991, p. B01. Accessed September 24, 2007. "Haiku, the poetry Nick Virgilio wrote, is filled with imagery. Yesterday at Camden's Harleigh Cemetery where, under heavy skies, a Virgilio memorial was dedicated by 100 friends, the images abounded."

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