Cover image of "Beasts of Chase" book by Loblolly Press, featuring artistic illustrations and bold typography.

Beasts of Chase

$14.00 $16.00you save $2.00

Free shipping on orders $35+

In stock and ready to ship. Ships within 2 business days.

 Show more

Rooted in the history of bear hunting in Appalachia since colonization, Beasts of Chase interrogates the relationship between black bears and the people who hunt them — sharply researched, deeply specific to the region, and alive to what displacement costs both the natural world and the human one. Andrew Mack's second chapbook.
$14.00 $16.00
Beasts of Chase
$14.00$16.00

More Info

Learn about the author and the book

Through sharp, lyrical poems, Mack interrogates the relationship between black bears and the people who hunt them, drawing parallels between ecological destruction and human vulnerability.

Bears stumble through ruined forests, hunters' dogs linger at the edges of shadowed clearings, and the hum of environmental collapse pulses beneath the surface. Mack captures the tension between predator and prey, life and death, revealing how survival always comes at a cost.

Rooted in the history of bear hunting in Appalachia and the eastern United States since the first periods of colonization, Beasts of Chase, is sharply researched and deeply specific to the region. Mack references Craven County, North Carolina, the site of the largest black bear ever recorded by hunters, as he examines how displacement and loss ripple through both the natural world and human history.

If you've been moved by the vulnerability of Ada Limón's The Carrying or the environmental reckoning of Camille Dungy's Trophic Cascade, Beasts of Chase leaves a quiet ache — a reminder of what it means to survive when the ground beneath you is always shifting.

Andrew Mack is the Founder and Managing Editor of Loblolly Press. He oversees editorial direction, acquisitions, and author partnerships across the catalog. His work at the press is grounded in a commitment to sustained editorial care, transparency, and building space for writers whose work is often sidelined elsewhere. Andrew is the author of three poetry collections, Weekend Revival and What the River Was, and Beasts of Chase and lives in Asheville, North Carolina.

Person wearing a denim shirt standing in front of a forest

Praise

Beasts of Chase is the kind of collection that makes your hairs stand on end. It has you peering behind every tree, hungry for more of Mack's crisp language and well-researched insight. All the while, you can't help looking over your shoulder because, as this quietly brutal cycle of poems reveals, the lines between hunter and hunted are not clean and none of us stand outside of the chase.
— — Sean Theodore Stewart, Writer and Former Fiction Editor of Fugue
In Beasts of Chase, Andrew Mack sings a lyric expansiveness confronting the brutal forces that shape survival. Through the lens of the black bear's Southern citizenship, the return of an abused dog to his owners, and the Sunday wives at the Food Lion, Mack explores both our vulnerability and complicity in cycles of harm. "To live is to hunger," he writes. Yet, amidst this reality, his work ripples with nature's scent and sound: "Puddles / at first barren— / now full / of life." Mack's craft echoes the clay-rich, weathered bedrock of Appalachia, reminding us that when the poet "speak[s] firmly" and "maintains eye contact," tenderness and hope bloom.
— — Candice M. Kelsey, Author of Postcards from the Masthead
Beasts of Chase puts you in the middle of a bear den, and forces you to make eye contact with a creature who has every right to kill you.
— — Clint Bowman, Author of If Lost
Mack's images of animals pushed to their limits pull at the heartstrings, but his language is a feast for the senses. Beasts of Chase not only evokes sounds, smells and tastes, but the language itself has a texture that curates the mood of each poem. Whether it's a bear's "paws dragging silt, tearing the roots loose" or "blackberries and blueberries and raspberries stuck in the corners of their mouths and all along their face, an eternal syrup," Mack paints with soft consonants and alliteration.
— — Matt Salerno, Mountain Xpress
Andrew Mack's poems reward repeated reading.
— — Meredith Summers, The Rest is Just Exposition

Latest from Substack

Stay updated with our latest posts and insights
Visit Substack