John H. McDowell provides an in-depth look at the Mexican ballad form known as the corrido, a body of poetry that draws from violence for its subject matter. Through interviews with male and female corrido composers and performers, plus a generous sampling of ballad texts, McDowell reveals a living vernacular tradition that chronicles local and regional rivalries and spawned the narcocorrido, ballads set in the drug trade and particularly popular along the Rio Grande border.

Detailed and rife with social and cultural implications, Poetry and Violence is a compelling commentary on violence as both human experience and communicative action.

John H. McDowell is a professor of folklore, director of Undergraduate Studies, and former director of the Folklore Institute at Indiana University. He is the author of "So Wise Were Our Elders": Mythic Narrative of the Kamsá and editor of ¡Corrido!: The Living Ballad of Mexico's Western Coast.