Rosellen Brown's poetry deals with racism and violence in Mississippi and with the grimness and desolation of city life in the North, specifically Brooklyn—themes that are still painfully valid in reality but have become almost banal when used as subject matter for poetry or fiction, unless the expression is particularly strong or fresh. The quality [of Some Deaths in the Delta] is uneven; Brown rarely seems sure of herself as a poet, for the poems tend to slip out of her grasp. I like some of her humorous asides … and some verses have an effective simplicity…. In its suggestion of uncommunicated rage, most of this volume seems insufficient as a liberation of the poet's feeling; the erratic Some Deaths in the Delta is ultimately unsuccessful, but promising.