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“Peter Ludwin’s collection, An Altar of Tides, opens with a most Northwest endeavor, ‘Digging Blackberry Brambles.’ It sets the stage for the journey that is this collection: ‘And these roots, this is to the death.’ The poem ‘Corn’ ends with this couplet, ‘…a rain shower spreads/its damp voice. Whispers, What have you done?’ These poems are Ludwin’s answer, and they arrive with a touch inspired by the beloved Milt from ‘Swanson’s Land of Flowers’ who works a shit job and instructs his minion, Do it right. These poems are an earthy mix of ‘sweat and stink and chipped wood’ and love. They are steeped in the natural beauty of the Northwest, they are in- tricate and intimate. Sections reveal a world of wood, tides, hay, longing and mirage. Near the collection’s close, ‘The Book on My Father’ says, ‘This story, like the loon’s, begins and ends in mist.’ This is the song of a life. Peter Ludwin does it right.”
– Kevin Miller, author of Vanish
“Helen Vendler, about Amy Clampitt’s The Kingfisher, praised a book in which ‘a Keatsian luxury of detail is combined with worldly insight.’ The same may be said of An Altar of Tides by Peter Ludwin. Its images convey a gritty sublimity and juxtaposition: a mushroom growing in a shower, a pioneer’s clothing iron swinging between her legs as she crosses the country, wounds blossoming or a scorched tree enduring wildfire. Ludwin navigates ‘where the world unveils a minor key’ in redemptive bluesy lines bountiful with ‘the insatiable heart’ of music and meaning. When the poet shares his reverence for the natural world and his guilt at its diminishing, the results are meaningfully conflicted. In the hands of a seasoned poet like Ludwin, even poems about his Austrian father engender the past as another endangered territory where regret is the permanent weather. Indeed, these poems come from a keen mind and deep heart.”
– Allen Braden, author of a wreath of down and drops of blood
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