Books signed by Kathryn Stripling Byer
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“If the Deep South is a dusty plain haunted by childhood, thesemountains are a crazy-quilt of trails haunted by women’s voices,”Kathryn Stripling Byer says of the Blue Ridge Mountains of western North Carolina, where she has spent most of her adult life. A native of the flatlands of southwest Georgia, Byer was drawn to the mountains, the birthplace of her grandmother, by an almost atavistic sense of belonging. Add any of the books on this page for your shopping cart (regardless of the inventory status), and use the "Order Comments" field to let us know how you would like your book(s) autographed and/or inscribed. Upon receipt of your prepaid order, we will ask Ms. Byer to come by the bookstore to complete your inscription request at her earliest convenience. As a working poet, Ms. Byer keeps a busy travel schedule and may occasionally require several weeks to complete a request. If you want a book that is simply autographed rather than personally inscribed, we may well be able to fill your order directly from our shelves within one or two days. |
Aretha's Hat: Inauguration Day 2009 is a unique collaboration between two poets who have been friends since meeting at a workshop with A. R. Ammons thirty-one years ago. Read more about it here.
TABLE OF CONTENTS: In the Photograph Gallery 3 Old 15 Letting 16 Fallow 17 Vanity 18 Eve 19 Cold Spell 20 Trunk 21 Music Lessons 22 Her Porch 23 Correspondence 24 Handiwork 26 Open Casket 28 Aria 29 Nocturne 30 Pearls 32 Dark Hour 35 Wedding 37 Eavesdropping 39 Wisteria 41 El Dia de los Muertos 42 Nemesis 44 Unanswerable 46 Bathtub 47 Early 49 Hoot Owl 50 Listen 51 Nightcap 53 Tired 55 Sleepless 57 Eve Sings to the Okra 59 Open 61 Notes 62
Table of Contents Coastal plain 3 Again 5 Scuppernongs 6 Hallows 7 Coming to rest 9 I listen 12 Pneumonia 13 Halloween 15 Empty 17 Nobody's baby tonight 19 Still to us at twilight 20 Chicago bound 21 A-ma' 25 Taking leave 26 Dreaming through Tennessee 27 Cumberland gap 28 Black road 29 Dead end in Pueblo, Colorado 31 Contemplation 32 Zuni 33 Continental divide 34 Edge of plains 35 Tent dream 36 Almost home 37 Stopping 38 A'ma 39 The still here and now 43 The exotics 45 Nets 47 Still life 50 Self-portrait with shades 52 Los Muertos 54 Precious little 56 Her daughter 58 Halloween again 60 Closer 62
Table of Contents Mountain Time The Ballad Singers 3 She 5 Dulcimer 6 Circuit Rider 7 The Devil's Dream 8 New Hat 10 When the Wind 11 Snow Breath 12 The Lookout 13 Tobacco 15 Before Dawn 16 Night Shade 17 Rose of Sharon 18 Full Moon 20 1 Bone 23 2 Storm 24 3 Phacelia 25 4 Sisters 26 5 Gypsy 27 6 Ash 28 7 Let's Say 29 Ripe 33 Delphia 34 The Morning of the First Day 36 Timberline 37 Latin 38 Sea Change 39 Wild 41 Wa'ya 43 Kanati 45 Backwater 48 Tuckasegee 50 Sile 52 Notes 53
In "Wildflower Flower," whose title derives from a traditional country song, Byer speaks through the fictional voice of a mountain woman named Alma, who lived in the Blue Ridge wilderness around the turn of the century. In narrative and lyric, Byer's poems sing a journey through solitude, capturing the spirit and the sound of mountain ballads and of the women who sang them, stitching bits and pieces of their hardscrabble lives into lasting patterns.
The landscape Byer depicts is haunted by disappointed love and physical hardship, but it is blessed with dogwood and trillium, columbine and hickory, and streams that sing a ballad as strong as any Alma has learned from mother or grandmother. Through these natural details and through Alma's indomitable voice, Kathryn Stripling Byer has brilliantly recreated a lost world.
Poems by Kathryn Stripling Byer in this anthology are:
Wildwood Flower
Bittersweet
Lineage
Easter
Mountain Time
Kay worked with another former North Carolina Poet Laureate, Fred Chappell, to judge a poetry contest that formed the basis for this anthology.
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