Mare's Nest

"'The
camera can make a fool of a realist, ' says the speaker in the opening poem of
Holly Mitchell's debut collection Mare's Nest. This
claim⁠--equal parts provocation and invitation⁠--prepares the reader for the
vivid portraits that follow: part family lore, part coming-of-age, part
naturalist study. Human intimacy is translated into the language of the stable,
the pasture, the horse farm; the precarity of a mare's life speaks to human
strength and fragility. The beauty and ecstasy here arise from language that
feels newly coined, never-before-heard. In these spare poems, vulnerability and
a radical openness to the other⁠--both human and animal⁠--sing without
sentimentality."⁠--Catherine
Barnett, author of Human Hours 'The poems in Holly Mitchell's triumphant debut
collection chronicle the history of a family, and a world, as it is vanishing
while, at the same time, describing, in various iterations, an exquisite equine
universe. Written in the cadence of a mad gallop, the poems are held back, then
set free to expand and unravel. Like a horse at the starting gate--readying for
the race, its heart, electric, it body pulsing with terror and exuberance,
Mitchell's Mare's Nest is the poetry collection we have all been
waiting for.'--Cynthia Cruz, author of Hotel Oblivion "Full
of both ache and praise, Mare's Nest is a calling, a
conjuring, a blessed airborne gallop embodying all the love and complications
of home. This collection stuns, stunts, envelops, rises, and arrives trailing
with shelled green beans, the gulping of creek water and the pregnant sigh and
heat of longing, searching, finding exactly who we are and where we
belong."--Ellen
Hagan, author of Blooming Fiascoes "Mare's Nest is precise and haunting,
spoken with the finest grit of red clay between the teeth. Plainly stating the
necessities and brutalities of horse breeding, here you will look into the
'near opal' eyes of a moonblind horse, witness what's known as 'a red bag
birth, ' when a dam presents a placenta before her foal. At the same time, Holly
Mitchell turns her unflinching gaze to her family and to Kentucky itself--to
osage oranges and snap beans, tornadoes and tobacco barns rotting back into the
earth. Distilled down as the finest bourbon and just as warmly burning, these
poems are rendered to their essentials, stripped of stereotypes and
sentimentality, 'trying to turn / & face everyone / where they're coming from.'" --Nickole Brown, author of Sister "I
can't remember the last time such compelling poetry was made out of a subject
so intensely specific-- Nick Flynn's Blind Huber comes
to mind, or Thomas Lynch's Skating with Heather Grace.
Not only will you learn a lot about horse placentas, but you'll be dropped into
the intimate dailiness of a Kentucky farm and a family, with Mitchell's
beautiful and bittersweet specificity as stark and gripping as Elizabeth
Bishop's. And there's a lexicon at the end! This is a book whose subject is
often the past but whose place is firmly with us in the present."

--Matthew
Rohrer, author of The Sky Contains
the Plans