And Blackberries Grew Wild

Written over a lifetime, these lyrical poems reflect on childhood, early marriage, motherhood, and multiple long relationships in what proves to be rocky going. The author puzzles, attacks, muses, jokes, and meditates, seeking a way through ever-changing personal landscapes situated within the cultural tumult of late-twentieth-century America and more specifically in the strange beauty of north-central Florida. In several poems, she contemplates her nomadic youth as a military kid; born in Miami, she eventually lived in six states and spent two far-flung years in Asmara, Eritrea, Africa. The shadowy but powerful memories of those early years-hibiscus, clouds, elusive scents, radio tunes, flowering gardens and trees-permeate these musings by a poet trying to find some sense and intelligence somewhere in this always disappearing world, looking for grace, finding herself a little at a time. Influenced by authors as diverse as Mark Strand, Charles Bukowski, and the great Russian poet Anna Akhmatova, Susan Ward Mickelberry presents the outcomes in AND BLACKBERRIES GREW WILD.

"Susan Ward Mickelberry's latest collection of poetry, AND BLACKBERRIES GREW WILD, has no agenda beyond communication. There's a lot of subtle symbology here, in nature, family, cats and geography, which creates a book that is spiritual, confessional and tributary, asking 'How dangerous is revelation?' The reader is invited into a serene world of love, life, memories, and finally, acceptance."-Nancy Patrice Davenport, author of Nothing and Too Much to Talk About

"Susan has obviously spent a lot of time honing her craft. Her style is natural and effortless. This Poetry just falls naturally off of the page. Susan is a true student of the craft, and I'm sure you will not regret engaging with this Poetry."-Michael D. Grover, author of Walking Away and many others

"Knowing then, and every day after, the only thing I'll ever know. Every moment is a lifetime. These lines from Susan Ward Mickelberry's poem "Open, Shut" resound as the reader is transported through a lifetime of sensory delights, insights, emotions, heartbreak, loss, imagination, and wisdom in everyday moments that are immortalized in each masterful poem. Intimate and searching, the poetry in And Blackberries Grew Wild speaks to the human experience in ways the reader can immediately savor. It leaves us wanting more." -Shana Smith, author, Islands of Cedars

"Susan Ward Mickelberry's poetry presents a "microcosm of body"-an intimacy of sensory experience found in whippoorwills and windows, fish bones and raspberries, mosquitos and moss, blood and thorns, a standard sink, a red tricycle. But this intimacy of detail, along with gentle rhythms of Mickelberry's narrative voice, cannot distract from the sheer breadth of content carried in the poetry. Reading her poems is like stepping into gentle waves of one of the beaches she writes about-the crispness of the water and sand and other minute sensations is vividly alive within the context of the vastness of the ocean itself. This collection moves from Apopka to Asmara, Muskogee to the Bahamas, the Ozark hills to Azores, exploring themes of "Everything"-love, sex, fragility, loss, abuse, revelation, consciousness, voice. And Blackberries Grew Wild offers us the unpretentious but rich and evocative life experiences of a deeply honest, thoughtful poet.-"J. Nishida, Poetry Editor of Bacopa Literary Review 2024