Mississippi
By Ann Fisher-Wirth and Maude Schuyler Clay.
Wings Press, 2018.

Mississippi is Ann Fisher-Wirth’s fifth book of poems; it is a poetry/photography collaboration with the acclaimed Delta photographer Maude Schuyler Clay. Mississippi suffers from severe environmental degradation that cannot be separated from its history of poverty and racial oppression. Yet, the state also possesses great natural beauty and a rich and complex culture, one interwoven from the many voices that have made up its identity. Mississippi explores both this degradation and this beauty. The poems are explorations of voice in its Mississippi plentitude and variety, honoring the voices, no matter whose they are, whether white or African American, and exploring the rich orality of Mississippi culture. With one exception, the beautiful, haunting photographs do not depict people, but, rather, swamps, fields, tress, lakes, empty chairs, dilapidated buildings. They work with the poems to offer the spirit of place.

“All these different voices banging around in one head, that’s Mississippi. And the gas pumps in the weeds, the hitchhiking dog, the shack literally beneath the hill, the unlit but nevertheless heat-warped candles. As large and real as the speakers become in Ann Fisher-Writh’s beautiful poems, another character surges to the fore, not of a person but place, of a land as betrayed as it is persistent, as real as it is magical. Maude Schuyler Clay’s photographs prompt these poems with such elegant and haunting images that it’s difficult to recall where the photographs end and the poems begin, which is how it should be. No matter where you’re from, if you’ve ever been homesick, this is your book.” ~ James Kimbrell, author of Smote and My Psychic.