“Comparable to apples, hiding complex sonnets,” the poems of Diana Adams have the density of objects or living things and the width of the most elaborate metaphysical conceit. Sharp snaps of landscapes, beasts of field and fable, keepsakes and dolls, linguistic and imagistic objects accrue in a living assemblage, the shop where every bit of bric-a-brac is a vital memory, a find, a jewel. A magpie dazzler of a book, Hello Ice is, quite explicitly, a world of refraction, re-layering, and rebirth – this is what happens when Alchemy meets Project, and off they go waltzing into the forest together.
—Ana Božicevic
Geoffrey Gatza at BlazeVOX Books NY has a wonderful talent for choosing talent. Take, for instance, Diana Adams and her marvelous new book of poetry, Hello Ice. Adams is lucky; she possesses an indelible voice, at once irreverently quirky and at other times profound and deeply poignant, and often, which is the most amazing thing, all three of these at once. Adams is one of the poets on whom the future of the genre depends. Hello Ice has the substance to win readers back from the discontented seats of their poetic exile. As she says in the first line of her poem, “Waylaid”
The x-ray in the hallway
is a screenplay
And so, dear reader, we, too, are instructed how to proceed.
-Andrew Demcak
Diana Adams has given us some of the finest beast poems since Ted Hughes, and like Hughes, she catches the spiritual value of animals as well as their pure thusness. She has the muse on speed dial, to crib a phrase from one of her own poems. Her attention to word and line is impeccable. She also pays attention to the lines of other poets and has made poems out of materials from Emily Dickinson and Wallace Stevens: construction as well as imagination. Imagine a shaman with scissors as well as the traditional drum. If she calls spirits from the vasty deep, they will come.
— Bert Almon
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