She Who Is Like a Mare: Poems of Mary Breckinridge and the Frontier Nursing Servic

The skillfully rendered dramatic monologues of Karen Kotrba’s SHE WHO IS LIKE A MARE document the Remarkable history of the Frontier Nursing Service in eastern Kentucky in the early twentieth century. Through the imagined voices of the founder, Mary Breckinridge, and the nurse-midwives she trained to travel the back roads of Kentucky on horseback, Kotrba

brings a whole community to life. With a sure command of the multiple tones and mixed dictions of the region, she gives voice to a wide range of characters: the local citizens who are protective of their mountain women who have always “birthed the babies”; the physicians who want to replace

any kind of midwifery with the new medical field of obstetrics; the fathers who ride out in fierce storms to bring help to their wives in labor; and the

mothers, the children, and even one amazing poem in the voice of a horse.

With this book, Karen Kotrba joins the company of our great documentary poets: Stephen Vincent Benet, Carl Sandburg, the Muriel Rukeyser of U.S. 1, and West Virginia poet Louise McNeill. She has brought to light a little known piece of women’s history—a story of cunning, courage, and caring—and has done so with unforgettable imagery, beautiful music, and love. This is a book I want to keep near me and reread, to remind myself of what is still possible in poetry and in our lives. --Maggie Anderson