This Country of Mothers, Baggott’s first published collection of poetry, won the Southern University Press Crab Orchard Award, which included a cash prize as well as an agreement to publish the book. As quoted in a release from the Southern Illinois University Press, in awarding the Crab Orchard prize, one of the judges, Rodney Jones, is reported to have stated that Baggott “is an accomplished poet of the eye and ear, of the definitive feminine experience, and her poems of private life are expansive enough to suggest a vision of a political and historical era.” Although Jones does not specifically mention “What the Poets Could Have Been”, he does point out that Baggott “draws themes as sharp as razors” and that her poems are “marvelously accessible.” Jones’s comments include the observation that “This...