Peasant

Peasant takes its title from a poem by Nikki Giovanni: "peasant food . . . must be mixed with your hands. Grandmother taught us that." These poems aspire to the richness of peasant food (and assert that there is a culture in poor rural America that is complex and beautiful).

The painter Alison Hall-who grew up with Woodford in Henry County, Virginia-describes this sometimes junky, haphazard beauty as "architecture without an architect" and Peasant tries to honor that aesthetic. Plainness an...