Sunken Lightship

Peter Makuck’s second collection of poems is one of those unpretentious poetry books . . . that document an ability sate a wide ranges of tastes . . . In sum, the clarity and honesty of The Sunken Lightship are reasons to praise and read it

Peter Makuck’s poems derive, as most poems do, from the sharings and losings of human relations—but with a brightening: these deep dispositions work out their ways in real places of land features, climates, life forms, physical actions. Particular grist informs Makuck’s vision and confirms his imagination’s grasp

Catholicity—a responsive quickness of eye and ear, a honed awareness of places and feelings and situations—is a central virtue of Peter Makuck’s first book of poems (Where We Live, 1982), and it remains so in The Sunken Lightship. His poetry moves widely but sacrifices neither profundity nor unity. What holds his work together thematically and tonally is a note of celebration, a gladness in the natural world and the people who have meant most to him, particularly his parents . . . Apparent here are Makuck’s self-effacing quietude, his craftsmanship, his heart. He brings powers of attention and devotion, an informing and generous love of the human family’s common life

Then there are writers like Peter Makuck who adapt to their new terrain, adopting the weather as their own and learning the history of the place and busying themselves with making their lives. Perhaps Makuck will never satisfy the genealogical purists, but he has made a poetry that depends on North Carolina and a North Carolina that depends on poetry. This is quite an achievement, a very southern achievement, a very American one