Black Shawl: Poems (Signed First Edition)

BYER, Kathryn Stripling

ISBN 10: 0807122513 / ISBN 13: 9780807122518

Published by Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge, LA, 1998

About this Item

First edition. Softcover. First printing. Simultaneous paperback issue of this collection of poems. A fine copy in wrappers. Signed and very warmly inscribed by Byer on the title page to another poet. Also includes a laid in signed letter from Byer to the same poet. Uncommon signed. Seller Inventory # 154266

Bibliographic Details

Title: Black Shawl: Poems (Signed First Edition)

Publisher: Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge, LA

Publication Date: 1998

Binding: Soft cover

Signed: Signed by Author(s)

Edition: 1st Edition

About this title

Synopsis:

Black Shawl emanates from Kathryn Stripling Byer’s fascination with female ballad singers in southern Appalachia, whose voices haunt the mountains still, and from the image of a black net or shawl being dragged over the ground, plumbing the depths, collecting bits and fragments of a woman’s life. The singers and storytellers of this splendid collection are struggling to answer the query of the book’s epigraph: “What will you make of this?”

The first section, “Voices,” offers a variety of female perspectives―those of mothers, daughters, sisters, lovers. These women are singing the old songs and waiting for their lives to change. “Blood Mountain,” the second part, experiments with ballad conventions and the mysteries of mythmaking: “ . . . one story’s good as another so long as there’s blood in it.” Delphia, a quilter and teacher who narrates the third section of Black Shawl, epitomizes these mountain women-the very ones who became the Keepers of the Ballads, the repositories, and who passed down their knowledge.

Through the remarkable mountain women of Black Shawl, Byer portrays the singers, once mute, finding their place, weaving a thread in the web of their existence and its endlessly evolving pattern.

About the Author:

A native of Georgia, Kathryn Stripling Byer has lived in the western North Carolina mountains since receiving a graduate degree from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where she studied with Allen Tate, Robert Watson, and Fred Chappell. Her several books of poetry have received honors from the Associated Writing Programs, the Academy of American Poets, the Fellowship of Southern Writers, and the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance.