Shorelines

Vision and heart—these are two qualities that poems worth our attention can never be without, and which Shorelines offers bountifully. Sensuous and accurate in their observations of North Carolina’s coastal waters, moving in their hopes for our lives, Peter Makuck’s poems are as bracing as spray from a bow wave

Peter Makuck’s poems about the natural world, however, are not divorced from the human world. Almost all of the poems presented as seascapes work as metaphors for the human predicament . . . These poems remind us of how few poets, outside Philip Levine, have thought to commemorate physical work and the men who do it

Peter Makuck’s Shorelines is an an attractive collection of twelve poems with a good deal of variety . . . . Makuck has a good sense of thythms, and a good ear for the sound of his lines. . . Though the poet appears in these poems, he is only one of the participants and does not demand (or command) all our attention. Every bird that flies by, every cloud that passes above, every highlight on the water is equaly honored. I find this a very appealing way of looking at and into the world