"I cannot ignore the reality of the body, its glorious beginnings and its subtle endings," writes Cortney Davis in this intimate and startlingly original account of her work at a women's clinic. A poet and nurse-practitioner with twenty five years' experience, Davis reveals the beauty of the body's workings by unfolding the lives of four patients who struggle with its natural cycles and unexpected surprises: pregnancy and childbirth, illness and recovery, sexual dysfunction and sexual joy. An abundance of solid medical information imbues every graceful line. Davis's eternal question to herself is: How do you help someone to not merely survive but flourish? In this compassionate and expansive book, she provides a template. I Knew a Woman will alter your perception of the humanity of medicine and the ordinary miracle of our physical selves. From the Hardcover edition.

I Knew a Woman: Four Women Patients and Their Female Caregiver

Davis, Cortney

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Ballantine Books

"I cannot ignore the reality of the body, its glorious beginnings and its subtle endings," writes Cortney Davis in this intimate and startlingly original account of her work at a women's clinic. A poet and nurse-practitioner with twenty five years' experience, Davis reveals the beauty of the body's workings by unfolding the lives of four patients who struggle with its natural cycles and unexpected surprises: pregnancy and childbirth, illness and recovery, sexual dysfunction and sexual joy. An abundance of solid medical information imbues every graceful line. Davis's eternal question to herself is: How do you help someone to not merely survive but flourish? In this compassionate and expansive book, she provides a template. I Knew a Woman will alter your perception of the humanity of medicine and the ordinary miracle of our physical selves.

I Knew a Woman: The Experience of the Female Body

Women's Health

Random House]

Leopold's Maneuvers (Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry)

Literature & Fiction

Poetry

University Of Nebraska Press

In the venerable tradition of caregivers writing about the healing arts—a tradition peopled by the likes of Anton Chekhov, Walt Whitman, William Carlos Williams, Walker Percy, and Denise Levertov—Cortney Davis brings to poetry the experience, insight, and compassion of a nurse practitioner who daily confronts the unexpected frailties, passions, and power of the flesh.
Taking the body as her text, Davis crafts her poetry from the pains of labor and the joys of birth, the depredations of disease and the sustaining hope of recovery. She trains her clear, unflinching gaze on the unfolding scene—a woman shipwrecked with a stranger; an adult reinventing childhood; an ill woman rediscovering pleasure in her body; a nurse realizing, in one harrowing instant, that she is as vulnerable as her patients—unerringly finding the particular image, the human detail, that connects reader, writer, and subject with the world. Primal, compelling, intelligent, these poems show us how to see as clearly as the poet does, with empathy and grace.

Bison Books

Details of Flesh

Poetic exploration of caregiving, mortality, and illness from within the medical establishment.

Calyx Books

Poetic exploration of caregiving, mortality, and illness from within the medical establishment.

The Body Flute

Adastra Pr

Winner of the 2013 Evergreen Book Award Bronze Medal for Health and Wellness The joys, fears, intimacies, and transcendent moments shared by a nurse and her patients “The Heart’s Truth should be required reading at every nursing school in the country. It offers a powerful and moving portrait of what it means to be a nurse. In writing that is of the highest quality, the reader is swept up in the drama of nursing and the compassion with which it is perfused.”―Richard Selzer, surgeon and author “Davis has perfectly captured the broader arc of movement from awkward, insecure novice to competent, often morally exhausted, clinician, with a poet’s touch.”―Amy M. Haddad, PhD “In her breathtaking collection of essays, Cortney Davis reveals ‘the details of flesh’ that comprise the core of a nurse’s experience. Writing with the power, precision and careful observation of a seasoned clinician and the sensitivity of a poet, Davis guides the reader along the challenging path of her career.”― Richard Berlin, poet and physician “Cortney Davis has an uncanny ability to give voice to the profound act of everyday nursing and its power in transforming the lives of people. Somehow, she sees the shadows and ghosts that fill our bodies and souls and makes sense of them, showing us that the divide between patient and provider is an artificial one that can get in the way of true understanding. The Heart’s Truth reminds us of the power of reflection and narrative and challenges us to reclaim these ways of knowing in the interest of healing our patients―and ourselves.”―Diana J. Mason, PhD, RN, FAAN, Editor-in-Chief, American Journal of Nursing What is it like to be a student nurse washing the feet of a dying patient? To be a newly graduated nurse, in charge of the Intensive Care Unit for the first time, who wonders if her mistake might have cost a life? Or to be an experienced nurse who, by her presence and care, holds a patient to this world? Poet and nurse practitioner Cortney Davis answers these questions by examining her own experiences and through them reveals a glimpse into the minds and hearts of those who care for us when we are at our most vulnerable. The Heart’s Truth offers the joys, frustrations, fears, and miraculous moments that nurses, new and experienced, face every day. In these finely wrought essays, Davis traces her twin paths, nursing and writing, inviting readers to share what she discovers along the way―lessons not only about the human body but also about the human soul. Rich, intimate, and never shrinking from the realities of illness, the grace of healing, or the wonder of words, The Heart’s Truth will inspire student caregivers, intrigue readers, and affirm those who have long worked in nursing, a profession that Davis calls “odd, mysterious, humbling, addicting, and often transcendent.”

The Heart's Truth: Essays on the Art of Nursing (Literature & Medicine)

Essays & Correspondence

The Kent State University Press

Paintings and reflections that share a nurse’s personal experience of illness In the summer of 2013, Cortney Davis, a nurse practitioner and author who often writes about her interactions with patients, underwent routine one-day surgery. A surgical mishap led to a series of life-altering and life-threatening complications, resulting in two prolonged hospital stays and a lengthy recovery. During twenty-six days in the hospital, Davis experienced how suddenly a caregiver can become a care receiver and what it’s like to be “on the other side of the sickbed.” As a nurse, she was accustomed to suffering and to the empathy such witnessing can evoke, but as a patient she learned new and transforming lessons in pain, fear, loneliness, abandonment, and dependency; in the fragility of health and life; in the necessity of family support; and, ultimately, in the importance of gratitude. Once at home, Davis wanted to respond to her illness creatively through her writing, but the details seemed too intense, too raw for words. As her recovery progressed, she found release in painting, discovering an immediate connection between heart and hand, between memory and canvas. In a series of twelve paintings, she reenvisioned episodes of her illness, moments that remained and replayed in her consciousness, ultimately providing an education in health care more resonant and more authentic than what she had found in nursing textbooks. Before, serving as a nurse in intensive care, oncology, and women’s health, Davis believed that she understood what hospitalized patients might be experiencing and how they might be coping. Her own illness taught her how little she truly knew and how important it is that all caregivers―professionals and family members alike―become aware of the physical and the inner emotional needs of their seriously ill patients. After the twelve paintings were completed, Davis wrote brief commentaries for each image. She used her remembrances to clarify and expand on her artwork, thereby making her personal story accessible to others. While every patient’s journey and every caregiver’s challenges are unique, these intimate and revealing paintings and reflections offer a glimpse into the universal aspects of illness and recovery.

When the Nurse Becomes a Patient: A Story in Words and Images (Literature & Medicine)

Arts & Photography

For poet and nurse practitioner Cortney Davis, the truth revealed through poetry is similar to what she has experienced in the heightened and urgent dramas that occur in health care—those suspended moments in which a dying heart might be revived or unbearable suffering relieved. We are vulnerable, her poems say, and we are dependent on one another—on the ways in which we care or fail to care for one another, in how we love or fail to love. In poems that are sensual, emotionally searing, and yet unfailingly tender, Davis shines a caregiver’s light on the most intimate details of the human body and the spirit within—how the flesh might betray, how it endures, and how ultimately it triumphs.

Taking Care of Time (Wheelbarrow Books)

Wheelbarrow Books

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Davis, Cortney. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Davis, Cortney

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Davis, Cortney. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

I Knew a Woman: Four Women Patients and Their Female Caregiver

I Knew a Woman: The Experience of the Female Body

Leopold's Maneuvers (Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry)

Leopold's Maneuvers (Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry)

Details of Flesh

Details of Flesh

The Body Flute

The Heart's Truth: Essays on the Art of Nursing (Literature & Medicine)

When the Nurse Becomes a Patient: A Story in Words and Images (Literature & Medicine)

Taking Care of Time (Wheelbarrow Books)