By: Annaliese Kunst
Wager is former Cream City Review contributor Adele Elise Williams’ debut poetry book—as well as the finalist for the 2024 Miller Williams Poetry Prize, in which the judge Patricia Smith described it as “crafted to upend the familiar.” This poetry collection explores how trauma fundamentally changes you and the harsh realities of an idealized Americana with meticulous wit and technique.
As soon as you start reading Wager, Williams shocks and challenges the readers in a seemingly simple poem titled “Deconstructing Milk Baby” that grows more complex the deeper you look. The poem explores Williams’ life in a simplified, broken-down formula, using repetition of “and before that” to mimic the cyclical nature of life. The strongest part of this piece is when Williams showcases how everything that happens to us—from birth to death—changes who we are:
“I was a floor baby / but not a bed baby / so my head / is round-round / like an acorn, / like a bumble / that bothered, left / and then returned. / Full circle. Full of resentment. / I am full of resentment / and fear. / I am a fearful woman.”
Williams returns once more to playing with time and childhood anxieties in “Earliest-Memory Prompt.” The use of enjambment within this poem forces the reader to keep reading and reading at a quick pace, just how these images flash through the speaker’s mind when she recalls her childhood. Additionally, the speed and pace at which she guides you through the poem leads you to gut-wrenching, subtly confronting lines. Flashes of tense childhood memories scar and leave an imprint on you, yet as Williams showcases here, are just another snapshot within your mind. The poem ends on a shocking note that perfectly displays how traumatic memories as a young child shape you:
“the heavy buckle snapping like cherry the dropping / like pop, no, it is like how at the deepest moment / of fucking i wanna die.”
The poem, “God Bless Americana,” details how the very core of Americana is brutalized violence while also portraying the inequalities between social classes within this culture. Yet, there is a clash between the speaker and blue-collar culture when it comes to roadkill and violence. The word choice of this poem is terrific, consistently using words associated with death and gore to immerse us into the rural South setting, while also juxtaposing it alongside mentions of Santa and G.I. Jane to showcase the clash between the speaker and this culture of violence. The combination of violence and childlike imagery is what really sells the poem:
“and after the neighbor shut her / door I ran to the beg, my hatchet at the ready, gripped cautiously / like a child’s hand while street crossing and when I opened / the trashed bag there was nothing inside but blood, blood.”
In “Take the Bait” Williams explores how harsh realities of her childhood still persist within her. She details rescuing animals and trying to help them, but always ended up slowly watching them die. This cycle led to morbid curiosity and obsession, which later leaked into other aspects of her life, such as writing poetry. The violence of roadkill and animals being hunted and consumed is examined and paralleled alongside fruit imagery and innocence, perfectly showing Williams’ addictive nature.
“I remember caring / for the strays under our house… I’d watch them die, always sick / and on the edge… Was my / interest in salvage or ritual?… I remember / the first poem I ever wrote — a clementine / full-faced and gasping as I consumed it / whole, even the juices hollered.”
It is impossible to easily and quickly summarize Wager in a few words, just as it is impossible to write a review on it and capture all of its themes. Williams is a firecracker and has an expert understanding of pacing, switching from lingering on a graphic image or skipping right past it like it was an everyday image. She keeps readers on their toes and her collection begs you to keep reading until all the poems have been consumed whole.
Wager is out now to read. Copies are available from University of Arkansas Press. You can order a copy here: https://www.uapress.com/product/wager/
Bios:
Annaliese Kunst is an undergraduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She is majoring in English with a focus in Creative Writing. Previously, she was the Managing Editor of UWM’s undergraduate literary magazine Furrow.
