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"BETWEEN US, BETWEEN THE LINES" |
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Four short stories, two novellas, and a couple of dozen poems traverse the contemporary landscape with an instinctive eye in this most unusual book. "It is difficult to offer a representative taste of Adams's work, so varied are its offerings. Whereas he handles the contemporary with a finely tuned heart and ear, he's also likely to sport in traditional (even archaic) forms and language. He is at times the intellectual, at times the comedian, at times the singer." Robert P. Arthur, Blackwater Review, Fall 1995 This collection of poetry and short fiction by Joseph D. Adams exemplifies the difference between narrating events and dramatizing them. And how Adams dramatizes the matter that makes up his poetry and short fiction in Between Us, Between the Lines reveals the precision and perception of his painter's eye. |
Poetry seems to come instinctively to Adams, the son of Italo-American poet Domenico Adamo (1888-1964). Poet and fiction writer Joseph Maiolo remarks that Adams' poems, "remarkably varied in substance," exhibit "the efforts of a well-traveled man who has viewed the world as a painter and has turned to poetry to give flesh to his vision." He notes that Adams, at his best in poems like "Ephemera," shows that "he can manipulate tone and language to evoke potent images, conveying frustration, hope, humor, and failure as he comments with diversity on life, art, thought, and love." Adams' fiction reveals insight into and often frustration with the human condition. The Time Hole, a novella, draws upon his sojourn in pre-revolutionary Iran. His artist life and experiences as a Los Angeles social worker underlie "A Portrait of the Artist as a Social Case Worker." Daily Bread, another novella, based on "tales my mother told me," as Adams puts it, vividly reflects the impress of his Italian heritage. BETWEEN US, BETWEEN THE LINES |
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