Literary Hub, 25 New Books Out Today!
Book Riot, Reflecting on Spring's Poetry by Connie Pan
Southern Review of Books, "The Best Southern Books of April 2023"
Jewish Book Council "Recommended Reading"
Autostraddle, "Close Out National Poetry Month by Preordering Queer Poetry Books" Honorable Mention in the 2023 Dr. Tony Ryan Book Award
"Springing from her years growing up on a horse farm in Kentucky, the memoirlike free-verse poems in this first collection from the Amy Awardwinning Mitchell are powered by visceral images related to breeding and raising horses."
Library Journal
The poets knowledge of and confidence in her subject are deep and clear, as are the observations, questions and discoveries. The writing is as taut and rippling as a thoroughbred in the first turn of a race shes sure to win.
Henry Hughes, New York Journal of Books
"Whether drawing attention to sounds'of the warble fly / nested under skin, / making a whistler / of the riding horse'or depicting a horse who 'appears almost / elegant, ewe-necked / but fescue-footed,' these poems immerse readers in the world of Kentucky horse breeding, a bodily world of afterbirth and syringes, of 'Regu-mate / with cracked corn.'"
Rebecca Morgan Frank, Poetry Foundation's "Harriet Books"
"I devoured Mitchells intimate debut collection.... Unfolding in two parts, this delves into, of course, horses and family, names, and growing up on a farm. Beyond the gorgeous cover, gorgeous poems await."
Connie Pan for Book Riot
"Her poems are a lilting meditation on parenting as a conduit for active choice."
Elisheva Fox, Jewish Book Council "Recommended Reading"
"This ones for the horse gays! Its about Kentucky, queer adolescence in the early aughts, and yes HORSES!"
Autostraddle, "Close Out National Poetry Month by Preordering Queer Poetry Books"
"Mares Nest . . . is a poignant exploration of the complexities inherent to Southern life, family dynamics, and the symbolism of horse breeding."
Rachel Thomas, Good River Review
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 claimequal parts provocation and invitationprepares 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 otherboth human and animalsing without sentimentality.
Catherine Barnett, author of Human Hours
"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 gatereadying for the race, its heart, electric, its body pulsing with terror and exuberance, Mitchells Mares Nest is the poetry collection we have all been waiting for."
Cynthia Cruz, author of Hotel Oblivion
"Full of both ache and praise, Mares 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
"Mares 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 whats 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 itselfto 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 theyre coming from.
Nickole Brown, author of Sister
"I cant remember the last time such compelling poetry was made out of a subject so intensely specific Nick Flynns Blind Huber comes to mind, or Thomas Lynchs Skating with Heather Grace. Not only will you learn a lot about horse placentas, but youll be dropped into the intimate dailiness of a Kentucky farm and a family, with Mitchells beautiful and bittersweet specificity as stark and gripping as Elizabeth Bishops. And theres 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
