Plain Notes on Emmett Till Imitating Haiku

This is a softcover book.

"I am a charismatic Itinerant Elder in the African Methodist Episcopal Church in the Northwest District of the Eighth Episcopal District that covers the States of Mississippi and Louisiana. I am a retired Professor of English from Mississippi Valley State University in Itta Bena in the Mississippi Delta, the backdrop of the Emmett Till tragedy.

Seven years ago, the Holy Ghost put on my heart to write poems about what happened to Emmett Till. Poetry seemed to be a plausible way for putting words to the incomprehensible shrouded in the unmentionable. I began by writing plain poems that asked unanswerable questions and Haiku that attempted to answer some of them anyhow. One answer kept coming to the forefront of my mind causing me to remember a saying I learned years before, that the truth out of season is error. That means the truth told at the wrong time can be as bad if not worse than lying. So, I put my poems aside until now." -Jo A. Baldwin