The spinning gyre of Past Lives is somehow grounded by V. Joshua Adams's ceaseless yet refined mysticism, a Dungeons and Dragons campaign to fold into, to bite. He swaps his druid for a chaplain and his paladin for a handyman whose truth appears in a cloud of cigarette smoke, one that lingers like one will over letters and other quiet, soft things; while the world is barefoot, treading only on the things it knows to be true. Adams's works exemplify both connection to place and lack of connection, working as a mixture of gasoline and antiknock, examining fragility and the pinnately compound structure of existence through songs that "gnaw bones," those of which could be likened to Louise Glück and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Each oxbow lake formed throughout Past Lives is a testament to boundless, intoxicating entropy, imbued with "shotgun stock bucks labrum up," looming flowers with terrible roots, and his Ohio. 

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    The structure of Past Lives is sharp. Between the sections, each representing a life, there are seamless connections: bookending brilliant vignettes with lengthier pieces and simple chronology— ""'til the 'til, 'til the stay, 'til the week / 'til the day, 'til the shape, 'til the if." Adams places Existence as an object that appears time and time again throughout the collection, whether it be in the peeled shavings of ginger or a revolver that works. In "Question of Tense," Adams writes "The window frame is not an allegory. It is a window frame," breaking the mirror at the end of the stanza. To remove the allegory from what seems to be a poem that would produce an allegorical representation, being present and capable of breaking a mirror is indeed an aspect of living. While alive, a person can ball their fist, raise their arm, and launch it into a mirror, shattering it "into a million pieces." They could tell their friends about it, too, when they run into them at the farmer's market. But all that friend will ever truly see is the hand, bandaged, and subsequently (in another life) after the friend tells them that "they've changed," the scar— but when they tell the story, time and time again, even two years later at a dinner party while going in for a scoop of mashed potatoes, the scar illuminated in the dining room light, Stephen will ask about it, so they will tell him how they proved their existence by shattering a mirror. Stephen will see the glass fall differently. However, to say that Past Lives is about existence and inevitable change would be much too simple, as lives are rarely built so close. 

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   "The Second Life" is softer than the first and third, though bodily "tangy as lamb's blood," displaying Adams's ability to hone in on images and senses through structural components, but having those aspects reflect the content itself. Where there were lines are now long breaths that reorient the reader, allowing for full admiration of the language, getting them to sit because "there's lobster, London Broil, beer / and rage about the sanity / of prophets and the right to sue." At a few of Adams's tables, there are examinations of the frivolity of the soul and mind, questioning how a life is to be brought to life (though life is, in and of itself, alive). 

 

   "The Third Life"  could be seen as a summation of the first and second, both figuratively and structurally, as the pieces lean slightly into prose, then pull back in a relentlessly refined manner (in the style of, for example, couplets) all while discussing "scrap-meat" and the dying generations that don't die fast enough. Within each life is a different mode of reconnaissance, sweeping moments, plucked carefully from the seemingly infinite expanse. Past Lives yawping and whimsical nature ceaselessly captivates, with a plethora of pieces reminiscent of monologues from Game of Thrones, moonsetting, careening, and halting at the gates. Stopped by "palisade maidens" who tell you to "bury everything that breathes / & then to breath itself becomes shoot to seed," while "souls drink blood from troughs"; but through metalloid flesh does Adams pierce, for "we have learned to love sovereignty once again, Victoria! Now show us your stuffed squirrels playing cards in a glass case." 

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