Review by Tessara Dudley
Before I know
the names of every tree and birdsong along the saltmarsh,
I will hold my daughter. And I will finally understand
that it is possible to be both the doe standing
in the clearing and the fawn leaping
through the meadow, scared, and on her own.
“Leap” (3)
In her poetry collection, Everything Is Water, Chelsea Krieg develops two major streams of experience: on the one hand, giving birth to a child and being a parent; on the other hand, the strain of caring for a partner battling cancer, and the potential loss that lies at the end of that road. There is contradiction inherent in this kind of duality, in the giving of life vs. the facing of death. In “The Two Times I Loved You the Most in a Graveyard,” the speaker reflects on this contradiction while sitting in a liminal space devoted to the possibility of either: “Once, when my aunt was dying, / I sat in the waiting room between ICU / and Delivery.” (33) In “Imagining Act II Without the Leading Man,” the speaker contemplates one possible future: raising a child without the partner she had assumed would be there as well: “After the final scene, // I step center stage, one hand grasping air / where his should be” (44). Even birth can be seen as a kind of loss, here: “already / I am grieving the hour / I will pour you from my body” (34). There is both joy and fear in the experience of gestating and birthing a child, another of the contradictions held in tension within these pages.
Medical treatment is a source of confusion and incongruity for many people, and so it is here. One poem explores the process of surgery—cutting into a body in order to promote healing. Another references a variety of poisons, using scorpion stings, rhubarb leaves, oleander, etc., to highlight how counterintuitive chemotherapy is: the patient is injected with toxic chemicals on purpose, in the hope their life will be saved. The speaker distracts herself from anxiety by contemplating the moon or the fact that human bodies are mainly composed of water, and wonders what she can offer her child when things feel so uncertain. She helps her husband to take his medication after surgery, knowing the pills may help him feel better while she herself feels only hollow and afraid. References to hollowness or fullness are also another way that water runs throughout the collection.
Titles are very important to understanding many of the poems in the book. Just skimming over the table of contents gives some strong hints about the themes in store for the reader. “Chemotherapy,” “Remission,” and “Diagnosis” all bring forward anxiety about health and death. Meanwhile, “Quickening,” “Letter to My Daughter or to Myself,” and “Birth Ghazal” point to the consideration of life and life-giving. Several other titles allude to mythology, fairy tale, or folklore, and these poems can have a strange, dream-like quality to them. Structurally, the author is unafraid to use the page creatively, utilizing prose formating as well as free verse, breaking into stanzas or rippling across the page. One poem is even rotated entirely to run up the page, presumably to preserve line lengths, as well as disorienting the reader slightly, similarly to the speaker being disoriented by her struggles.
This is a very short collection, which leaves room for each poem to stand distinct, none re-treading ground covered by any of the others. However, the book does feel somewhat unresolved, perhaps because it concludes with a question: “but, Chelsea, how long can you scream underwater?” (52). The speaker doesn’t know the answer, and nor does the reader, who is left to ponder the multi-faceted nature of water. It surrounds and sustains us in literal ways before birth, but once we are out in the world we face the threat of metaphorically drowning. This is the duality of life, and it is central to the book.
Chelsea Krieg is a poet and a freelance journalist, as well as the Administrative Director of the MFA Program at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, NC. She was runner-up for Hub City Press’s 2023 New Southern Voices Poetry Prize and a finalist for the New South 2021 Poetry Contest. Her freelance writing has received nominations for the APEX Award and an American Society of Business Publication Editors Azbee Award of Excellence. Chelsea holds an MFA in poetry from NCSU. Everything Is Water is her debut poetry collection.
Everything Is Water by Chelsea Krieg
TRP: The University Press of SHSU, 2026, 74 pp, $21.95 [paper],
ISBN 1680034588
Tessara Dudley has published poetry in Sun Star Review, Wordgathering, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, #EnbyLife Journal and Soul Poetry, Prose & Arts Magazine, and in anthologies published by Minerva Rising, Zoetic Press, Damaged Goods Press, and Wingless Dreamer. They are the author of Fallen/Forever Rising, and are currently working on their second poetry book, a collection of sapphic reimaginings of fairy tales, folklore, and myths. Tessara shares poems, writing resources, and book reviews at http://tessaradudley.substack.com