About Our Poets

Overall, the Stoneman experience in country music in many respects mirrors in microcosm the entire history of the genre. After all, the whole evolution of the music has been an unqualified success story. Its popularity often ebbs and flows like the tide. Styles change and individual stars come and go. Only a very few manage to stay at or near the top for more than a few years (pp. 253-54). Modern country music is geared to the marketplace. The young stars are packaged to take advantage of the perceived audience. Many come from middle-class or privileged backgrounds, often from circumstances far removed from anything rural or "country." Thus there is something heartwarming, and important, about the Stonemans, who had both country and urban experience, who suffered and had many disadvantages, but who persevered and still persevere to sing and play, from the heart, about the life they have personally known. —Loyal Iones About Our Reviewers Garry Barker is marketing manager at Berea College Student Crafts Program, and also a free-lance writer of both fiction and nonfiction . . . Ginny Carney, a teacher and lecturer, is also a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Kentucky in Lexington . . . McKenzie P. Ison, a Letcher County, Kentucky, native is an Old Regular Baptist Preacher . . . Loyal Jones has published extensively in the fields of Appalachian music, religion, and humor . . . Parks Lanier, Jr. He teaches in the English department of Radford University in Virginia . . . Kevin Nance is a reporter and special features writer at the Lexington, Kentucky, Herald-Leader newspaper. About Our Poets Bob Henry Baber, Athens, West Virginia, is a well-known Appalachian poet and teacher . . . John Cantey Knight lives in New Orleans but says North Georgia is the home of his heart . . . David Finley Moore, Madison, West Virginia, teaches English at Southern West Virginia Community College . . . Mattie Quesenberry has degreesfrom Hollins College in Virginia. She lives and works in Washington, D.C. ... Mary L. Parker grew up in North Carolina and currently lives in Tucson, Arizona . . . Bettie Sellers, distinguished poet and teacher with many awards for excellence in both teaching and writing, has several volumes ofpoetry. 69 ...