Nicholas Virgilio; Haiku Poet Was Revered in Japan

WASHINGTON —  Haiku poet Nicholas Virgilio, who once described his work as a “way of getting turned on to life,” died of cardiac arrest after falling ill on the set of CBS’s “Nightwatch” program. He was 60.

Philip O’Connor, the show’s executive producer, said Virgilio was taping the first of two planned seven-minute segments to be aired Wednesday morning when he appeared uncomfortable and nervous.

He complained of congestion in his lungs six minutes into the interview and an ambulance was called, O’Connor said.

Virgilio died a few hours later of cardiac arrest, hospital spokesman Yvonne Hyott said Wednesday.

Virgilio was well known in the United States among devotees of haiku but was revered in Japan, where the spare 17-syllable form of poetry was invented.

Virgilio once told an interviewer he wrote poetry “because I want to be alive. It’s a way of getting turned on to life. And it’s also enthusiasm. I mean, what . . . good are you if you don’t have enthusiasm, some energy to give other people?”

Born June 28, 1928, in Camden, N.J., Virgilio served two years in the Navy, graduated from Temple University and became a rock ‘n’ roll disc jockey during the 1950s and 1960s.

He said the turning point in his life came after he moved to Texas and fell in love with a woman who became pregnant but refused to marry him. He suffered a nervous breakdown and a psychiatrist later told him he needed to find an outlet. That outlet was poetry.

He had been published in a number of books, newspapers, magazines, and journals.