In Makuck’s fourth collection of short stories he once again explores the fertile territory of small, rural American towns. With tenderness and clarity, he excavates the mundane surface of everyday lives to reveal compassionate characters who are unexpectedly vulnerable. The stories in Wins and Losses are set in a car, a courtroom, a university English department, a sports bar, a jetliner, a laundromat. Characters struggle with regret, desire, expectations, and a need to win when loss is inevitable. A high school student whose father was killed in a car crash and who can speak openly only to his girlfriend delivers prescriptions for a pharmacy and learns much about people and values in the course of his deliveries. A lawyer recalls a dubious family friend, an undercover cop, who pressured him as a young boy toward guns and football. A recent widow finds a cardboard box on her front porch only to discover it contains the body of her dog. A young woman takes her mother to a cardiologist and, while in the waiting room, gets into an argument with a wealthy political conservative at great cost to both of them. In the tradition of Cheever and Updike, Makuck's stories give us characters struggling with questions of what really matters.
A recent widower tries scuba diving with his difficult teenage children as a way to galvanize the family and regain control of his life. These are some of the people who inhabit the richly textured worlds of Peter Makuck's Costly Habits. In many of his stories, individuals find themselves in situations where moments of clarity arrive, moments that disclose perspectives of possible change or ways to accept things as they are."--BOOK JACKET.
The stories in Allegiance and Betrayal are set in cars, on top of a water tower, in a bar, on a fishing boat, at a family farm, and at a swimming pool. Each story carries an aura of the mystery surrounding family relations, the enigma of love, the gaping rift between generations, the give-and-take between husbands and wives, and the inevitability of loss. The book begins with a suite of three stories about Tim Budney. In the first, he reluctantly leaves home and his beloved hot rod Ford to attend a small Catholic college; in the second, he experiences a conflict of allegiances—loyalty to a friend versus lying to his teacher and priest; in the third, he imagines that his uncle, a pool hustler, is in danger and returns to the uncle’s tavern where he witnesses something unforgettable. In other stories, a Yankee house painter trying to sell his car encounters a tricky, Bible-quoting southerner; a married couple hurtfully moves away from their friends of twenty years without saying goodbye or leaving an address; a near fatal scuba dive revives a friendship of many years; a family reunion turns ugly on the subject of religion; and a high school French teacher arranges an offshore fishing trip to settle a score with the football coach. With deft prose and a generous spirit, Makuck explores the deep but subtle range of human emotion. Humorous and tender, these stories offer rich portraits of individuals struggling to overcome failed dreams and searching for an answer to the question of what truly matters.
“Peter Makuck sees through the detritus of daily life to what matters. . . . It’s that essence that lives deep down in things, looked for in people, sea- and landscapes, and creatures, that lifts the quotidian toward the marvelous, and animates this selection of poems from four decades.”—Brendan Galvin From "Long Lens": Folding laundry, I can see our clothesline waving its patches of color like the flag of a foreign country where I had happily lived in a small clapboard house surrounded by pines. I can hear my mother in her strong accent saying she didn’t want a dryer even when we could finally afford one— Our sheets won’t smell of trees and sunlight anymore. Long Lens represents forty years of Peter Makuck’s work, including twenty-five new poems. With precise language, Makuck’s imagery evokes spiritual longing, love, loss, violence, and transcendence. His subjects include the aftermath of the 1970 killings at Kent State University; scuba diving on an offshore shipwreck; flying through a storm in a small plane; rescuing a boy caught in a riptide; and lucid observations of spinner sharks, a gray fox, a spider, and a pelican tangled in a fishing line. Peter Makuck taught at East Carolina University from 1976 to 2006, where he founded Tar River Poetry. He was 2008 Lee Smith Chair in Creative Writing at North Carolina State University. Winner of the Brockman Award and the Charity Randall Citation, he lives on Bogue Banks, one of North Carolina’s barrier islands.
Through lyrical narrative, the poems in Mandatory Evacuation find radiance in everyday people and subjects by the simple act of noticing—of seeking that which matters most. Like returning home with new eyes after a devastating storm, these poems startle us to awareness, focusing on the passage of time, the beauty of small, fleeting moments, and the importance of paying attention.
In Makuck’s fourth collection of short stories he once again explores the fertile territory of small, rural American towns. With tenderness and clarity, he excavates the mundane surface of everyday lives to reveal compassionate characters who are unexpectedly vulnerable. The stories in Wins and Losses are set in a car, a courtroom, a university English department, a sports bar, a jetliner, a laundromat. Characters struggle with regret, desire, expectations, and a need to win when loss is inevitable. A high school student whose father was killed in a car crash and who can speak openly only to his girlfriend delivers prescriptions for a pharmacy and learns much about people and values in the course of his deliveries. A lawyer recalls a dubious family friend, an undercover cop, who pressured him as a young boy toward guns and football. A recent widow finds a cardboard box on her front porch only to discover it contains the body of her dog. A young woman takes her mother to a cardiologist and, while in the waiting room, gets into an argument with a wealthy political conservative at great cost to both of them. In the tradition of Cheever and Updike, Makuck's stories give us characters struggling with questions of what really matters.
The stories in Allegiance and Betrayal are set in cars, on top of a water tower, in a bar, on a fishing boat, at a family farm, and at a swimming pool. Each story carries an aura of the mystery surrounding family relations, the enigma of love, the gaping rift between generations, the give-and-take between husbands and wives, and the inevitability of loss. The book begins with a suite of three stories about Tim Budney. In the first, he reluctantly leaves home and his beloved hot rod Ford to attend a small Catholic college; in the second, he experiences a conflict of allegiances—loyalty to a friend versus lying to his teacher and priest; in the third, he imagines that his uncle, a pool hustler, is in danger and returns to the uncle’s tavern where he witnesses something unforgettable. In other stories, a Yankee house painter trying to sell his car encounters a tricky, Bible-quoting southerner; a married couple hurtfully moves away from their friends of twenty years without saying goodbye or leaving an address; a near fatal scuba dive revives a friendship of many years; a family reunion turns ugly on the subject of religion; and a high school French teacher arranges an offshore fishing trip to settle a score with the football coach. With deft prose and a generous spirit, Makuck explores the deep but subtle range of human emotion. Humorous and tender, these stories offer rich portraits of individuals struggling to overcome failed dreams and searching for an answer to the question of what truly matters.
A recent widower tries scuba diving with his difficult teenage children as a way to galvanize the family and regain control of his life. These are some of the people who inhabit the richly textured worlds of Peter Makuck's Costly Habits. In many of his stories, individuals find themselves in situations where moments of clarity arrive, moments that disclose perspectives of possible change or ways to accept things as they are."--BOOK JACKET.
“Peter Makuck sees through the detritus of daily life to what matters. . . . It’s that essence that lives deep down in things, looked for in people, sea- and landscapes, and creatures, that lifts the quotidian toward the marvelous, and animates this selection of poems from four decades.”—Brendan Galvin From "Long Lens": Folding laundry, I can see our clothesline waving its patches of color like the flag of a foreign country where I had happily lived in a small clapboard house surrounded by pines. I can hear my mother in her strong accent saying she didn’t want a dryer even when we could finally afford one— Our sheets won’t smell of trees and sunlight anymore. Long Lens represents forty years of Peter Makuck’s work, including twenty-five new poems. With precise language, Makuck’s imagery evokes spiritual longing, love, loss, violence, and transcendence. His subjects include the aftermath of the 1970 killings at Kent State University; scuba diving on an offshore shipwreck; flying through a storm in a small plane; rescuing a boy caught in a riptide; and lucid observations of spinner sharks, a gray fox, a spider, and a pelican tangled in a fishing line. Peter Makuck taught at East Carolina University from 1976 to 2006, where he founded Tar River Poetry. He was 2008 Lee Smith Chair in Creative Writing at North Carolina State University. Winner of the Brockman Award and the Charity Randall Citation, he lives on Bogue Banks, one of North Carolina’s barrier islands.
Through lyrical narrative, the poems in Mandatory Evacuation find radiance in everyday people and subjects by the simple act of noticing—of seeking that which matters most. Like returning home with new eyes after a devastating storm, these poems startle us to awareness, focusing on the passage of time, the beauty of small, fleeting moments, and the importance of paying attention.
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