A salute to Camden's haiku master

Sunday afternoon in Camden, a group will convene to celebrate the life and work of a poet who called the city home and is now buried in its famed Harleigh Cemetery.

If Walt Whitman is mentioned at all at the event, it will be only in passing.

That's because the gathering will pay tribute not to the 19th-century literary giant but to Nick Virgilio, whose poems written in haiku - the ancient Japanese verse identified by its three lines containing five, seven and five syllables, respectively - made him a titan in his own right.

This month marks the 20th anniversary of the poet's death. Sunday's event at the Campus Center of Rutgers-Camden - dubbed "Remembering Nick" - is both a memorial and a fund-raiser. Proceeds are earmarked for the Nick Virgilio Haiku Association, whose mission is to keep Virgilio's legacy alive and encourage haiku education in schools.

According to one ardent admirer, Virgilio, who died at age 60, was a writer of uncommon depth and perception. "I think he's important because he was an artist . . . who could talk about the most horrible thing and bring some beauty to it," offered Henry Brann, a Philadelphia-licensed master electrician who is the board president of the Camden-based organization.

Like other fans, Brann points to the series of pieces that Virgilio, who often broke the 5-7-5 rule in his work, wrote after his brother, Larry, lost his life serving in Vietnam. Among them:

my dead brother . . .

hearing his laugh

in my laughter

Virgilio's ability to find the positive in the extremely negative still resonates with the man who was as close to him as anyone.

"I used to say he mined beauty from the sewers of Camden," said the Rev. Michael Doyle of Sacred Heart Church. "He's quite extraordinary in terms that he just focused on that effort to find beauty and meaning" in everyday occurrences.

For association board member Robin Palley, Virgilio's genius was his ability to cut to the heart of an emotion with a minimal amount of words. "It's a simple form of poetry, but . . . you can feel and hear and see what he was feeling and hearing and seeing," she said.

That Virgilio became, in some circles, synonymous with haiku belied his history and ostensible career path. A graduate of Camden High School, he was a Navy vet who used his G.I. Bill benefits to study broadcasting. He worked as a sports announcer and disc jockey (he was a colleague of Jerry Blavat's on Camden's old WCAM-AM), before fate intervened in 1963.

During a visit to the Rutgers-Camden library, Virgilio happened across a collection of English-language haiku. Inspired, he embarked on a career whose monetary rewards were virtually nonexistent but whose psychic and intellectual dividends nurtured him for the next quarter-century.

Virgilio's haiku were soon being published in academic journals, anthologies and the like. As important as the exposure was the critical acclaim his work received as reviewers proclaimed him a master of the form. He was particularly popular in Japan, where no less a figure than Crown Prince Akihito translated into Japanese the following haiku:

Lily:

out of the water . . .

out of itself.

But it won't just be Nick Virgilio the poet who will be honored Sunday. The program will feature remembrances and anecdotes from those who knew him best, as well as fans who simply appreciated his poetry.

All are invited to share their thoughts.

Those closest to him will no doubt recall a most unusual personality - a man who, according to Doyle, had a wardrobe composed of "dead man's clothes" and who hunt-and-pecked his poems on an old Remington typewriter.

Brann, for one, won't ever forget his introduction to Virgilio. He recalled walking into Sacred Heart one day in 1985. "There was this guy there. All of a sudden, [he] grabs me from behind and reads me a haiku. Then he said, 'What do you think?'

"His breath stunk of garlic and his tongue was orange from eating too many carrots," which he consumed for health reasons.

But Brann, like so many others, was captivated by Virgilio and his calling, which Brann said "was to spread the word of literacy in the broadest sense."

While Virgilio's fans would like to see the poet ranked with immortals like Whitman in the public consciousness, Doyle suggested that in his own modest way, Virgilio has had the last laugh already.

He noted that while Harleigh Cemetery contains the opulent final resting places of numerous Camden movers and shakers, it's the grave of an obscure poet who "never had $5 in his pocket" that draws the most attention from visitors.

"There are all these people who were so important and successful," said Doyle of the cemetery's residents, "but it's this little guy in the dead man's clothes who is remembered." *

"Remembering Nick" takes place from 2 to 5 p.m. Sunday at the Rutgers University Campus Center, 326 Penn St., Camden, $10, 856-365-0136 after 6 p.m., or e-mail: Nick.Virgilio.Haiku@gmail.com.