(all photos by Corinna Lynette Byer)
WHATCHA GONNA DO?
When they say your language is PLUSH?
"The plush language and potentially captivating narrative are dulled by excessive sentimentality."
(reviews.coldfrontmag.com/2006/06/coming_to_rest_.html---Melinda Wilson)
INDULGENT?
"Kathryn Stripling Byer’s poems in Coming to Rest are often indulgently sweet.
Byer continues the poem in this fashion, with overwritten lines like, “I’m trapped in a coma / of middle-aged dullness” that evoke frustration rather than sympathy."
OH, WHAT'S A POET TO DO?"
Hey, lighten up, says Lord Byron, lap-dancing in the easy chair! What do they know? Dance the flamenco and forget about i!
And be grateful for a few crumbs of praise! Woof, woof!
"On rare occasions, her sentimentality is successful."
Dance, dance, and this goes for everyone who's ever been rejected by a magazine, ever gotten a bad review, or ever not gotten a grant from either the NEA or the Guggenheim Foundation, or whatever local or state arts council.
15 comments:
LOVE IT!!!
I have a couple of stinker reviews on Amazon. As an antidote, I gave one of the more unpleasant characters in my next book the same first name as one of the reviewers.
Yes, I can be petty.
(Love your dance!)
Love it, Vicki! Looking forward to reading the new book. Way to go! K.
I love your pictures with your post .. very dramatic! :o)
Kay, I love your declaration, your pictures and your dance. I enjoy your blog.
I remember that chair with books stacked all around as one would expect in the home of practicing poet. Steve Harvey said one time, "Did you see all those books stacked around her chair? If you're going to write poetry, she is the person who can help you." True. I remember.
Nancy Simpson
Yes I agree just Dance!!
I didn't get a grant from NCAC this year because the panel felt "that most of the participating artists (in the proposed project) were not fully professional and that overall their artistic merit was insufficient to warrant Council funding" These were my best local artists and I took it very personally!
Sometimes I do feel the need to dance around crazy-I shut the office door and turn the music UP!
Jessica, what a bummer about the NCAC rejection. I'm glad you turn the music UP! And I hope the panel reads my laureate blog about my visit to Johnston County.
The rejection part of sending your work into the world just never ends does it :)
Thanks for the dance!
I love it!! Let's all get out and dance!
I love your response. Is it just our human nature to note every single word that is negative. (Even with those anonymous student course evaluations, I feel the bad ones, even when I know they were written by the kid texting in the back whom I dropped after excessive absences.
Thanks for the pictures accompanying the dance. They made my day!
This is fabulous! You made me laugh and cry.
(Those few crumbs of praise...)
I remember the pictures of Anais Nin dancing flamenco, and now--you replace her in my imagination. I will dance!
love and thanks, Marilyn
Somehow I had missed this great post. Thanks for telling us about the "Award" or I might not have seen these photos that say more than words. Love the dance.
You go get 'em, Kay!
So this is what's its like to be an award winning poet who then goes on to be the poet laureate, huh? Wow, it never ends. Stabs in the heart, in the throat, in the manuscript. I think when one gets to your caliber as a poet, one can expect to have people gunning for you. I'll be more content with a few close friends telling me I'm great and I'll bask in it knowing that the more well known I become (ahem)the more people will tear my work apart and find strange and wonderful words to stay against it. LOL I love your attitude..THAT'S the part I want to adopt for my own. :)
I'm sneaking around in your old posts. Oh my gosh, this is an awesome response. I'm trying to steel myself for bad reviews for my upcoming chapbook. Notice how I gracefully plugged myself there? Ha! Ha! Then I'm dumb enough to admit it.
But seriously, I dread the reviews. Even if there are good ones, the bad ones will stink up the room. But there's always somebody who has to be sour grapes, I guess. What do they know? You're an award winning poet laureate. They can pisseth off:) I love your dance.
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