Slip Knot by Diana S. Adams

In the spare, elegant poems of Diana Adams, you will find ephemera, vestiges of material culture, and the specter of Emily Dickinson.  But to say that Adams is only a master curator of imagery and influences would be to underestimate her powers as a poet.  As a seasoned reader of contemporary experimental work, I'm rarely so struck by a creative practitioner's ability to take familiar experiences and render them suddenly and startlingly strange.  The defamiliarizing impulse in these poems is powerful in its subtle philosophical underpinnings, its flawless execution, and its haunting artistry.  Diana Adams is an exciting and necessary voice in contemporary innovative poetry.  Brava!  —Kristina Marie Darling, author of Daylight Has Already Come, Fulbright Scholar, & Visiting Researcher at Universidad Complutense de Madrid 

In Diana Adams' Slip Knot language twirls in a fantastical motion of ordinary events gone looping into knobs of surreal perception.  Mind bending internal experiences spin from a turtling gaze.  Temporary stops from a masterful unraveller. —Maureen Owen

Diana Adams’ new collection, Slip Knot, is a riveting immersion into musicality. And like diving into cool lake water, the reader experiences an exhilarating sensation of disorientation before returning to the surface for air. The first and longest portion of the book might be imagined as a kind of travelogue that journeys not only to geographic locations, but also traverses emotional, intellectual, and philosophical terrains: “little jolts / from here to there & to other / theres”. The long series, “Pied Poems,” recombines poems by Emily Dickinson into new offerings composed according to the “logic ofmusic” to oftentimes surreal effect. “Slush Fund” continues to reach for the upper limit of music producing language “where the ear can feel It”. And indeed Adams’ poems are a treat for the ear while simultaneously humanely tracing theuncertainty of human experiences. —Robert Manery


Diane Adams’ Slip Knot makes even driving along the endless thruway exciting: “Roads snake, on a trip / of their own” “hoping / for somewhere where / nothing is everywhere.” In the pitter-patter of daily life, Adams’ signature sentence fragments build on her immediate surroundings as we “prolong along / delight in stalling.” In “Of,” one of her “Pied Poems” rearranging the words of Emily Dickinson’s poems, Adams reconfigures the “Chariot / That bears the Human Soul” to “there is a human prancing / no page lands away / nor any chariot without / poetry.” I admire how at ease Adams is, as she faces the unknowability of time and of poetry: “don’t fret, I’ve been here before / sit, tilt into the swirl a little / the waterfall only comes at the end.” –Tiffany Troy, author of Dominus

Diana S. Adams is an Edmonton, Alberta based writer with work published in a variety of journals including Fence, Boston Review, Drunken Boat, Poets and Artists, The Laurel Review, many others and several anthologies. Her fourth book of poetry, Imported Poems was published by BlazeVOX Books. BlazeVOX Books also published her novella, To The River. Diana has three poems in Best American Experimental Writing 2016.


Book Information:

· Paperback: 66 pages

· Binding: Perfect-Bound

· Publisher: BlazeVOX [books] 

· ISBN: 978-1-60964-463-5

$18

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