For I Am Mountainborn

"In Changsha, China, far away from her ancestral home, Lenore McComas Coberly observes a man "pulling a cart on steep roads." She thinks, I know this place, / this man, / for I am mountainborn." the vigilant sympathies of this poet ensure that she will find, wherever she is, kinship with other people and the places they inhabit. It is an honor and a comfort to find such dedication of spirit." 

-Fred Chappell, professor of English at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro is the author of many collections of poetry including Look Back All the Green Mountain and Shadowbox. 


"Lenore McComas Coberly's poems manage to be plainspoken yet profound, downhome and deeply sophisticated all at once. They bring back cow paths, broom sage, pawpaws, lilacs blooming around porches, yet Coberly is not lost in nostalgia and these poems are anything but sentimental. "Glory is everywhere", she warns, "but not forever." 

-Lee Smith, New York Times bestselling author of Guests On Earth 


Lenore McComas Coberly, author of The Handywoman Stories and Sarah's Girls: A Chronicle of Big Ugly Creek, grew up in Lincoln County, West Virginia.