Adele Elise Williams is the author of Wager, selected by Patricia Smith for the Miller Williams Poetry Series, and, with Dana Levin, is a coeditor of Bert Meyers: On the Life and Work of an American Master. Her critical and creative work explores how gender performances and working-class ecologies engage designations of high and low aesthetics, specifically within confessionally innovative poetics. Williams is an assistant professor of poetry at Missouri State University, teaching in the MFA program, and serves as assistant editor at Conjunctions and Texas Review Press.

• I. InvocationEnchantationII. The Filthy EventHoly MountainThe Cruelest MonthMidrash While WomanSelf-InvasionLove PoemUnloved Among WatersI Want to Hold YouConfessions of an AcademicMagdalena SonnetThe Speaker Is HatchingPrelapsarian OdeKeeping TabsFoamy MidrashMy Lover, the Moment I First Saw Him Nude,Love PoemSemiotics in SpringCommunionIII. After the MakingMoon SwoonIdolatry for DummiesQuick and Dirty MidrashDear God, Essay on the DevilBus Stop MadonnaMan-SizedMidrashian SonnetAmerican MaryDeep South AuguryA Poem for Texan SummertimeThe Light FantasticLove PoemFuneral MuseumThrough PossessionGeological FatesArt HagOn Dreaming My Own DreamGod HuntIV. SummaDivine DistillationAcknowledgmentsNotes