Salter's collection, 1988 winner of the Lamont Prize in poetry, harks back to an earlier era and to an earlier style of poetry. Like Elizabeth Bishop, Salter offers a voice that is relaxed, accessible; the poems contain regular stanzas and frequent rhymes. Her open chattiness in the midst of careful description (for example, of netsuke nut carvings) make the poems read like letters from a friend. These poems about families, friendship, and the passage of time are bittersweet; several focus on a death or irrevocable loss (even if only of a chalk picture in the rain), yet they are upbeat. All the poems are well crafted; and a few are both delicate and profound.
- Cristanne Miller, Pomona Coll., Claremont, Cal.
Author
Mary Jo Salter is an American poet, a co-editor of The Norton Anthology of Poetry and a professor in the Writing Seminars program at Johns Hopkins University. Salter was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan and was raised in Detroit and Baltimore, Maryland. She received her B.A. from Harvard University in 1976 and her M.A. from Cambridge University in 1978. In 1976, she participated in the Glascock Prize contest. While at Harvard, she studied with the noted poet Elizabeth Bishop. From 1984 to 2007, she taught at Mount Holyoke College and was, from 1995 to 2007, a vice-president of the Poetry Society of America. Salter has been an editor at the Atlantic Monthly and at The New Republic, and she is on the editorial board of the literary magazine The Common, based at Amherst College
