Mare's Nest

The debut poetry collection from Holly Mitchell, Mare’s Nest, explores a Kentucky horse farm in its turbulent beginnings.

The title refers to the idiom—a complex and difficult situation, a muddle and an illusory discovery—as well as an image: the depression a horse leaves after lying in the grass. These poems trouble the meaning of a racehorse and in particular the broodmare and the foals she carries. Reaching from the photographic experiment of Muybridge’s Horse in Motion to Patti Smith’s album Horses, Holly Mitchell touches upon history, dreams, Southern family stories, and queer adolescence in the early aughts.