Bernadette McComish

Florence Nightingale's Lost Log Bernadette McComish

"What strange mercy I sew with dull pins," says Florence Nightingale in Bernadette McComish's fascinating new chapbook. In spare, deadly accurate lines--a nurse's work in Crimean winter is "closing eyes/frozen open"--McComish will show you the antipodes of the human condition: our capacity for suffering, our ability to love in the face of horror, and the silence at the heart of our lives. Florence Nightingale's Lost Log is a brilliant achievement." -Dennis Nurkse




Florence Nightingale's Lost log is an imagined affair between history's most famous nurse and a soldier during the Crimean War. Nightingale unapologetically gave up romantic relationships to be in service of others. In these lost pages she reveals a longing and passion for connection, if only in her mind.