Outlaw Style is a collection of narrative and lyric poems, many of them in the tradition of Robert Browningas dramatic monologues. While gothic imagery, humor, and nineteenth-century diction and reference alternate and interweave, the four thematic currents that converge in the collection are music, race, spirituality, and the impact of monstrosity on somewhat innocent bystanders. Poems like aDar He, a aScuppernongs, a and aPlantation of the Mada address the history of American racial intolerance with muted horror, while the final series of poems explores the roots and impact of traditional music, from unsettling songs of the Carter Family through Delta Blues and the haunting ballad aStrange Fruit.a The collection also features poems, such as aShepherd Ollie Strawbridge on the Chicken Business, a which question the nature of spirituality; and the central section, aThe Booth Prism, a performs a kind of sA(c)ance in which the author channels the voices of many of the peopleafrom Anna Surratt Tonry to Boothas lovers and siblingsawhose lives were altered by contact with Lincolnas assassin. Throughout Outlaw Style formal and vernacular rhythms stand in counterpoint, images of violence excavate a stark and troubling beauty, and history and mystery fuse and feud, as the landscape and culture of the American South are presented for interrogation and understanding.