Mississippi Delta Women in Prism

In her debut collection, Claire T. Feild offers narrative poems about women living in the Mississippi Delta in the 1950s and the early 1960s. Many of the poems speak of proprieties revered by these women during a time of placidity that eventually sparked radical change. A darker meaning pervades these poems, for black-white relationships are explored by a writer whose formative years were spent collecting images from the kudzu-covered hills along Highway 49, the sultry cotton fields of the Yazoo Delta, and locales such as Henick’s Auto Supply and Goose Egg Park.