There is considerable variety in Booth's Margins, perhaps inevitably, since the book is a gathering of selections from previous volumes (twenty-eight poems), as well as a collection of new poems (twenty-three)….

[Booth is] very much a poet of place…. Booth's place is the Maine coast, and he seems not at all sure that a man can find himself there or anywhere else, for the world is not so easily to be tamed and made friendly. Booth's landscapes are ominous, forbidding, and his central metaphor is, significantly, that of the tide. For what it is worth, I pass along the information that the words "tide," "tidal" or "ebb" appear in eighteen of the last thirty-eight poems, and not at all in the first thirteen. Throughout much of the book, then, the metaphor appears almost obsessive, as it should be; for Booth is much concerned with the ebb and flow of things. The opening poems stress instead the theme of waking and sleeping, but that is another sort of ebb and flow….

The great ebb and flow, of course, is that of time; it rolls in from the future and recedes into the past, and men stand for a while poised against its rhythms. The idea of margins embodies this theme precisely, for Booth is writing about people at the edge, on the borders, where the margin of life is sharply outlined against all that lies beyond. Appropriately, these poems are placed against a background of fog, snow, cold winds and the open sea. In its essentials—and Booth is concerned with nothing but essentials—the view we are given is bleak and bare; we live in a hostile universe, and that is a fact that cannot be changed, struggle as we will….

Booth's style is as unadorned as his landscapes. The lines are short; words seem to be spoken grudgingly, in taut, controlled rhythms. The structures are tightly woven, so much so that … it is difficult to find sections that will stand by themselves…. It is all there, the fog, the wind, the tide, the bleak pursuits. As the fish boats go out, so do we all. (p. 474)