Swans Island Buoys and Other Lines

In Swans Island Buoys and Other Lines, an award-winning poet shares his compilation of poetry spanning forty years and providing a colorful glimpse into life on a small working island in Blue Hill Bay in the Downeast Maine coastal waters.

Donald Junkins, a former professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and Director of the Master of Fine Arts program in English, offers seventy-five poems presented in a lyrical, resonant voice. Junkins includes original poetry and works previously published in such journals as The New Yorker, The Virginia Quarterly Review, and the two-volume anthology Contemporary New England Poetry. With a polished style, Junkins illustrates daily life for the 350 year-round inhabitants who orchestrate their lives around the tides, nightly winds, lobstering, fog, and late summer rains.

In a world where the natural ebb and flow of nature dictates everyday life, Junkins offers an exquisite collection of poetry reminiscent of a time gone by.

On this late morning in late June
two yellow butterflies traverse the beach peas
where the seawall begins.
Mourning doves sound in the air.