Claude Before Time and Space: Southern Messenger Poets

The final complete collection from Pulitzer Prize winning poet Claudia Emerson demonstrates a poet in the throes of experimentation as she quietly but fiercely explores the subjugations of mortality and time.

Divided into three parts, the first section of Claude Before Space and Time uses rural, small-town southern settings to reflect on memory, the self, and relationships. The following section then unfolds into experimental forms that explore historical figures--from an early naturalist and writer who raised her children in poverty to a small-town doctor from the early 20th century. The collection concludes with "Claude poems,"-- after the poet's father-- which embrace a colloquial tone and round out this illuminating body of work.