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The poems in Hillbilly Madonna (Driftwood Press 2022) by Sara Moore Wagner have a story arc as deftly told as any well-written Appalachian literature. A family in turmoil, violence, an opioid and heroin crisis, poverty, and a sister-daughter-mother-grandmother caught in it all—these are the primary elements in this unflinching collection. The poems touch on some of the same topics readers have encountered before in such works as Demon Copperhead. Yet Wagner’s work rises above the tropes to find a deep, complicated, often painful yet ultimately transcendent look at a place, a family, and a slice of the family’s culture. An astonishing, powerful work by a young poet, this is an endlessly complex collection to be digested slowly. Each poem demands special attention as each verse tells its own unique story. If you are a casual reader of poetry looking for gentle words about sunrise over the mountains and spring flowers in the forest, come to Hillbilly Madonna carefully: these poems are intense, unsettling works of art. And, yet, in keeping with the juxtaposition of tender and tough throughout this collection, there are phrases as beautiful as sunrise and flowers blooming. The opening poem in the collection, “Fit to be Tied,” was originally named “Hillbilly Madonna.” This poem sets the stage and tone quite well for the poems to come and introduces two sisters who will roam throughout the collection. In “Fit to be Tied,” these sisters are out in the countryside, “sitting in tall grass, cattails / fat and brown” when the moon comes up. While there are hints of the idyllic in some of the phrases, the poem balances the beauty of the moon with mosquito bites, chiggers, and sweat bees. It also makes the startling announcement that “No one told us / how to live as a girl would, to clean / the dirt from our toenails,…” “Fit to be Tied” introduces a tone of wistful regret that finds its way into other poems with its final line “Summer, even now, gone.” In “Pre-Heroin,” a prose poem about the sisters, that wistfulness echoes again with “How much power we had that night. Just enough / to be taken away.” In “How Could She Have Known,” this wistful regret takes a harder edge with the phrase “this bud of a girl who’s marked / for loss. This mother who’s ripe / for chopping.” That hard edge of regret sharpens more in “Narcan Metamorphosis,” where after the sister barely survives an overdose, “she is the same girl, and she returns to the needle again.” Woven into these poems, with their extended metaphors, gut-kick images, and vibrant visuals, there is also beauty. In “Even if These Promises are True,” for example, “In the Spring, the oak trees bud leaves small / as a mouse’s ear.” And in “Fit to be Tied,” “the moon is suddenly there / in the dusty blue sky just like the smooth / flat stones we throw into the pond.” Wagner’s talent for metaphors and lyrical phrasing, coupled with her evocative use of the many senses, has the impact of bringing the readers right into the full center of the poem. In that way, like the best novels, she excels at her world-building and creating her strong sense of place. The poems often display some rather shocking or at least unique similes. In “We are That Farmer’s Daughters,” for example, “Morning / spreads like the thin veil of blood around the brain.” In “Old Wives Tale,” the poet asks, “help me undo / our childhood like an old corset…” Hauntingly, in “Idle and Lawless,” as the sisters play at being boys like Tom and Huck, the poet sees the future and that she “will leave you with that needle in your arm / like a box of stolen gold.” Sara Moore Wagner is the winner of numerous awards including the 2021 Cider Press Review Editors Prize for her book Swan Wife, and the 2020 Driftwood Press Manuscript Prize for Hillbilly Madonna. She is the author of the chapbooks Tumbling After (Redbird, 2022) and Hooked Through (Five Oaks Press, 2017). She is also a 2022 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award recipient. Her poetry has appeared in many journals and anthologies. She currently lives in Ohio with her husband and three children, and she teaches Creative Writing at Northern Kentucky University. To learn more about Wagner, visit her at: https://www.saramoorewagner.com/about