Wild Juice

Ashley Mace Havird grew up on a farm in South Carolina. She is the author of three poetry collections and a novel, Lightningstruck. Her poems and stories have appeared in Shenandoah, Southern Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. She lives in Shreveport, Louisiana.

"Clean, clear, and accurate, Havird's poems are reportage from the front lines of a life intensely lived. It is obvious that nothing is lost on the sentience of these poems; but to understand how Havird's mind transforms what otherwise might be ordinary into momentary miracles is to experience, fully, the alchemy of poetry."--T. R. Hummer "Cross Elizabeth Bishop's eye for observation with Flannery O'Connor's ear for storytelling and you might get Ashley Mace Havird, a poet who grew up on a Southern tobacco farm with a restless intelligence and a steely wit. Look for her star to rise as steadily as Bishop's in the years to come: she is that quietly, astonishingly, enduringly good."--Julie Kane "Ashley Mace Havird's Wild Juice impresses one with productive affinities and distinctions. The experience drives home the open range of current Southern verse--how distinctly, if fearfully and wondrously made these poems are. . . . Havird's words ground us. Her language is straightforward, conversational, open, just as her tone is frank, relaxed, at times wryly funny. . . . [she] shows exquisite control of image, particularly at the start and close of her poems, where piquant images serve as narrative punctuation marks. . . . Havird keeps things real. Make no mistake, however, turning in her hands, the vernacular vibrates with meaning."--Literary Matters "In Wild Juice, Ashley Mace Havird flexes her own distinctive, straight-ahead narrative skill by mixing her soulful sense of connectedness with a musician's ear for the intricacies of speech, its richness, and its idiosyncratic prospects."--David Baker "The forty-nine poems in Wild Juice are written in a somber measure and penetrating voice that seem perfectly tuned to the current moment of pandemic-induced isolation and existential crisis. Together, they conjure an amazing portrait of one woman's exploration of deep internal solitude. Wild Juice is a brave and beautiful book."--Kate Daniels