The poems in this book were written after the epitaph form used by the 3rd century B.C. poet, Heraclitus, for his collection of poems believed to be called Nightingales. Using the only known poem remaining of Heraclitus' work, "The soil is freshly dug," Glodek was moved to apply his ancient European form to a more modern and American context, that of slavery in the United States. This series of epitaphs are written in the voices of women who were slaves in the American South, and the name of the book, Birds of Mississippi, echoes the title of Heraclitus' collection.