Peter Makuck is an American poet, short story writer, and critic. He is Distinguished Professor emeritus Professor of English at East Carolina University

East Carolina University

East Carolina University is a public, coeducational, engaged doctoral/research university located in Greenville, North Carolina, United States. Named East Carolina University by statute and commonly known as ECU or East Carolina, the university is the largest institution of higher learning in...

, where he was also the first Distinguished Professor of Arts and Sciences; he has also served as Visiting Writer in Residence at Brigham Young University

Brigham Young University

Brigham Young University is a private university located in Provo, Utah. It is owned and operated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints , and is the United States' largest religious university and third-largest private university.Approximately 98% of the university's 34,000 students...

, Visiting Distinguished Professor at North Carolina State University

North Carolina State University

North Carolina State University at Raleigh is a public, coeducational, extensive research university located in Raleigh, North Carolina, United States. Commonly known as NC State, the university is part of the University of North Carolina system and is a land, sea, and space grant institution...

, and Visiting Distinguished Writer-in-Residence University of North Carolina-Wilmington. In 1993 Makuck received the Charity Randall Citation from the International Poetry Forum. In 2010 his Long Lens: New & Selected Poems, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Poems, stories, and reviews by Makuck have been published in many leading journals including Poetry

Poetry

Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...

, The Southern Review, The Hudson Review, Ploughshares

Ploughshares

Ploughshares is an American literary magazine founded in 1971 by DeWitt Henry and Peter O'Malley in The Plough and Stars, an Irish pub in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Since 1989, Ploughshares has been based at Emerson College in the heart of Boston...

, and others, and his work has been featured on the Poetry Daily website and on Garrison Keillor

Garrison Keillor

Gary Edward "Garrison" Keillor is an American author, storyteller, humorist, and radio personality. He is known as host of the Minnesota Public Radio show A Prairie Home Companion Gary Edward "Garrison" Keillor (born August 7, 1942) is an American author, storyteller, humorist, and radio...

's Writer's Almanac. Makuck was the founding editor of the journal Tar River Poetry

Tar River Poetry

Tar River Poetry is a literary journal published by East Carolina University . Published twice a year , the 64-page journal consists of submitted written works of poetry, critical essays, and book reviews. The journal is named for the Tar River, which runs through Greenville, NC...

. He lives with his wife, Phyllis, on Bogue Banks

Bogue Banks

Bogue Banks form a barrier island off the mainland of North Carolina in Carteret County. The island, separated from the mainland by Bogue Sound, runs east to west, with the ocean beaches facing due south...

, one of North Carolina's barrier islands.

Education

Makuck received his B.A. from St. Francis College in Maine

Maine

Maine is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States, bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the east and south, New Hampshire to the west, and the Canadian provinces of Quebec to the northwest and New Brunswick to the northeast. Maine is both the northernmost and easternmost...

, his M.A. from Niagara University

Niagara University

Niagara University is a Catholic university in the Vincentian tradition, located in the Town of Lewiston in Niagara County, New York. Originally founded by the Congregation of the Mission in 1856 as Our Lady of Angels Seminary, it became Niagara University in 1883. The University is still run by...

, and his Ph.D. from Kent State University

Kent State University

Kent State University is a public research university located in Kent, Ohio, United States. The university has eight campuses around the northeast Ohio region with the main campus in Kent being the largest...

, where he wrote his dissertation on William Faulkner

William Faulkner

William Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer from Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner worked in a variety of media; he wrote novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays and screenplays during his career...

. As a student he witnessed the 1970 Kent State shootings

Kent State shootings

The Kent State shootings—also known as the May 4 massacre or the Kent State massacre—occurred at Kent State University in the city of Kent, Ohio, and involved the shooting of unarmed college students by members of the Ohio National Guard on Monday, May 4, 1970...

; his early poem "The Commons" addresses this event.

Themes

According to Lorraine Hale Robinson, Makuck's poems "repeatedly explore the themes of epiphany and second chances; of the relations of mystery, grace, and beauty; and of the revalatory effects of jolts of violence." He has a "compelling interest in place....[T]he landscapes of Eastern North Carolina have influenced his work," as has the desert Southwest (214-215).

Matthew Schmeer, in his review of Makuck's Off-season in the Promised Land, notes that

Acceptance is as an undercurrent in these poems: acceptance of time, of fate, of the changing seasons, of loss, of the gifts and glimpses of the natural world. It would be easy to label Makuck a naturalist after reading this collection, as fully three-fourths of the pieces are about encounters with whales, hawks, fish, weather, shifting sandbars and whatnot. But . . . Makuck does not see nature as wholly benevolent. There is always an undercurrent of danger, of quiet violence, times when a quick squall can blow in from offshore, when the beauty of the landed fish is admired for a moment before the knife is unsheathed. Hawks and hurricanes cannot be held to moral standards, and Makuck revels in revealing this seam where violence and calm collide. . . .

Works

Poetry

• Long Lens: New & Selected Poems. Rochester, NY: BOA Editions, 2010. ISBN 978-1934414323
• Off-Season in the Promised Land. Rochester, NY: BOA Editions, 2005. ISBN 1-929918-71-2
• Against Distance. Rochester, NY: BOA Editions, 1997. ISBN 1-880238-44-6
• Shorelines. Maryville, MO: Green Tower P, 1995. ISBN 978-1887240000
• The Sunken Lightship. Rochester, NY: BOA Editions, 1990. ISBN 0-918526-74-4
• Pilgrims. Bristol, RI: Ampersand P, 1987. ISBN 978-0935331035
• Where We Live. Rochester, NY: BOA Editions, 1982. ISBN 0-918526-40-x

Short Story Collections

• Costly Habits. Columbia, MO: U of Mo P, 2002. ISBN 978-0826214461
• Breaking and Entering. Champaign, IL: U of Illinois P, 1981. ISBN 978-0252009259

Criticism

• An Open World: Essays on Leslie Norris. Co-edited with Eugene England
  Eugene England
  George Eugene England, Jr. , usually credited as Eugene England, was a Mormon writer, teacher, and scholar. He founded Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, the oldest independent journal in Mormon Studies, with G. Wesley Johnson in 1966 and cofounded the Association for Mormon Letters in 1976...
  
  . Rochester, NY: Camden House, 1994. ISBN 978-1879751828