Bonnie Johnson-Bartee is a poet whose primary subjects are motherhood and daughterhood in all their various manifestations. She casts a tender yet searing eye upon family histories, dynamics, and the very notion of "women's work," and each poem in this collection takes the reader on a journey toward recognizing how vulnerable and fallible we all are in our search for a meaningful life. Cord Blood is a sort of verse memoir: it's personal, honest, and authentic, but it's also universal in its acknowledgment of parental guilt and the redemptive possibilities of legacy. Johnson-Bartee reminds us that fairy tales so often betray us, but without the telling of tales, both those that carry light and those that carry shadow, our lives lack muscle and blood.