Out of Speech: Poems

by Adam Vines

Grounded in technical mastery, the poems in Out of Speech address issues both universal and timely. In this series of ekphrastic works, Adam Vines explores themes as varied as exile, family, disease, desire, and isolation through an array of twentieth- and twenty-first century painters, including Picasso, Hopper, Rothko, de Kooning, Warhol, Lichtenstein, and Artschwager. He also goes within and beyond these works of art to explore characters set in the present-day museums, from a bored docent to a misinformed “explainer” of an artwork’s meaning. Combining these two views―one that looks at the painting and another that looks around it―his poems affirm the artist’s insights into the complexity of being human.

Genres: Poetry

78 pages, Paperback

Published March 21, 2018

Reviews

[Emma Harding · Rating 4 out of 5]

The poet does an excellent job extracting meaning from the paintings he references. In doing so, he repaints, or restrokes, the subject of each painting. For instance, "When Pubic Becomes Public" takes the elements of the painting and combines them with others to make new descriptors. As an ekphrastic poem of Tome Wesselman's "Great American Nude #57," Vines takes the daffodils in a vase and uses them as a descriptor for the woman's demi-bob hair (ex., "daffodil demi-bob"). This imagery connects the subject with their environment and demonstrate the poem's semi-independence.
Since I don't know much about paintings or sculptures, it was tedious to look up every painting online. I wish Vines's website had a section that shows each painting next to each corresponding poem so I wouldn't have to type each one out.
There is not a notes section. This is disappointing to me because there are some ideas that don't quite make sense to me as a reader. For instance, I can't tell if things like "Yo, Adrien" is an inside joke or reference to the movie "Rocky."

[K.K. Fox · Rating 5 out of 5]

This excerpt from the poem "Not-Story" captures the motif of the book:

"Rothko said he was no colorist
and a painting is not an experience.
Don't be coy. Make me believe in this innocence
of nothing, the not-story of our lives."

[Stephen · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favorite swamp poet cleans up nice and goes to the gallery, masterfully.