World Enough, and Time

Mary Makofske pays keen attention to the arresting details of the physical world and reflects on life—both personal and public—in mature, finely-crafted, intelligent poems that range from charming to poignant, witty to fierce, intimate to philosophical. World Enough, and Time is rich with “birth songs and keening, / the music that plays while the god / is torn and eaten, / the forces that hold the world / together and blow it apart.”

Ellen Bass, author of Like a Beggar and The Human Line

I read Mary Makofske's fourth collection, World Enough, and Time, with unqualified enthusiasm and can't recommend it highly enough. These are necessary poems, urgent and vital, when global climate change means the very title is ironic. Now, when “the world comes to a slow boil,” she gives us words “illicit as refugees / crossing the border at midnight.” Makofske knows how to find “the text submerged / in the rasp of sea against beach,” knows how to “fish for sense below the surface.” This is work from a mature writer at the top of her game, no filler, just poems you need to read, over and over. I look forward to what comes next from this glorious writer.

Barbara Crooker, author of Small Rain and Barbara Crooker: Selected Poems

It is impossible to read Mary Makofske’s collection without being dazzled by her voracious appetite for life. She is an observer, a reporter, a guide, a participant. Family, photos, art, childhood, war, the neighborhood with its trees and gardens—all grist for this poet’s pen. Makofske not only devours life but also practices her craft with the skill of someone who knows what she’s doing. While journeying through this collection, readers will be always aware of “Time's / wingéd chariot slowed to a cruise upstream / on a leisurely river with plenty of stops / along the shore.”

Diane Lockward, author of The Uneaten Carrots of Atonement and The Crafty Poet II: A Portable Workshop