A Phone Call to the Future: New & Selected Poems (review)

Mary Jo Salter is as astute a commentator on the current American scene as poets come nowadays. Moreover, this severely chosen sampling from her collections published since 1984, preceded by eighteen new poems, maintains an extremely high level. It displays Salter's graceful skill both in and out of strict forms, wit and an unerring eye for detail, an abundant human sympathy.

A large proportion of the poems tell stories. One of the most ambitious, "Alternating Currents" yokes together histories of Alexander Graham Bell, of Joseph Bell (a model for the character of Sherlock Holmes), and of Helen Keller and Annie Sullivan. This union of disparate narratives is well enough achieved, if a bit arbitrary. "The Hand of Thomas Jefferson" succeeds better, I think, bringing together the stories of the widowed Jefferson's lost love (not Sally Hemmings, but Italian-born artist Maria Cosway); of his successive injuries to wrist and arm, and of his final reconciliation with John Adams. Jefferson's longings, his triumphs and frustrations, are rendered real and graspable.

Several of the most engaging poems seem immediately personal, involving loved ones or drawing from direct observation. The poet's strengths emerge in the elegiac poems "Lunar Eclipse," for Anthony Hecht, and "Another Session," a sonnet sequence in tribute to a therapist whom the poet calls "Possessor of my secrets, not a friend." At times I think Salter's work might gain from concision, from stepping up the pace of the story, although, Lord knows, I couldn't remove a word from "For Emily at Fifteen." And "Lullaby for a Daughter" informs with meaning a mere four lines:

Someday, when the sands of timeinvert, may you find perfect restas a newborn nurses fromthe hourglass of your breast.

How is that for taking Longfellow's worn phrase "the sands of time" and making it new?

It would be hard not to like several poems that give us on-the-spot portraits or vignettes: "Executive Shoeshine"; "The Rebirth of Venus," in which a sidewalk artist redraws in chalk Botticelli's goddess; "At City Hall," where an intimidated bride and groom are applying for a marriage license; "Boulevard de Montparnasse," a glimpse of two people whom the poet nominates as the most beautiful couple of lovers in the world.

If Salter is at all like any other poet, she recalls at moments Robert Frost and Elizabeth Bishop. Hers is a similar Bishoplike precision, as in "Point of View":

As if the leaden clouds       had let loose all their force               as sharpened pencils,the rain falls into line-       or dotted lines, in length               and slant so uniform,so steadily dashed off,       they are themselves the calm               within the storm.

That isn't a self-contained poem, only the rich beginning of one. And in the couplet that ends "Goodbye, Train," I can almost hear Frost wrapping up a poem with his gravel-throated delivery:

I think what luck it is, to be one who says goodbye to trains instead of other people.

In poems that don't remind me of anyone else, Salter is fond of citing odd details in seemingly whimsical fashion, then letting them open up into deeper comparisons. Waking up in the morning, a weekend guest finds her thoughts leading to the birth and death of planets ("Beach House, Space-Time"). The experience of waking is beautifully conveyed, too, in "Wreckage," in which coming out of the world of dreams is likened to having a ship sink beneath one's feet. A poem, we are told in the deftly turned "Poetry Slalom" is like a downhill skier weaving his way between obstacles: "Much less / the slam / than the slalom / gives me a thrill: / the solemn, no fuss / Olympian skill / in skirting flag after flag / of the bloody obvious."

At moments formal, Salter's language never descends to bookishness. It is as if she were writing a letter to an intelligent and sensitive reader-so that, reading her, we...