A Kiss in Space: Poems

by Mary Jo Salter

From the first poem, which takes us up in a hot-air balloon over Chartres, to the last, in which a Russian cosmonaut welcomes an American colleague onto the Mir space station, Mary Jo Salter's exhilarating fourth collection draws the reader into the long distances of the imagination and the intimacies of the heart. Poignant poems about her own past--such as "Libretto," in which a childhood initiation into opera merges with a family drama--are set against historical poems such as "The Seven Weepers," where a nineteenth-century English explorer in Australia comes face-to-face with the Aborigines his own people have doomed to decimation. The book's centerpiece, "Alternating Currents," juxtaposes real historical figures like Alexander Graham Bell and Helen Keller with their fictional contemporaries Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, as each of them plumbs the mysteries of perception. Along the way are poems on family life, on films (from home movies to Hollywood romances), on travel in France, and on works of art (from a child's fingerpainted refrigerator magnet to Titian's last painting).

In this splendid and engaging collection, Mary Jo Salter pays homage with wit and compassion to the precious dailiness of life on earth, while gazing tantalizingly beyond its boundaries to view such wondrous events as a kiss in space.

Genres: Poetry

96 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

About the 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

Reviews

[julie | eggmama · Rating 1 out of 5]

The poems were indeed well crafted, but felt too formulaic, with little emotional resonance

[Jared · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you must read this book, read the second section twice. It is beautiful and horrible and Dr. Watson is somehow simultaneously magicked into the following: Coke snorter's assistant (obviously), Secondhand man to light bulbs, and person who drops endless Helen Keller jokes.

The verity of this review may or may not be accurate.

[Tami · Rating 2 out of 5]

Alternating Currents was excellent. The rest of it was ok, or unnecessary to read. I am glad I have exposed myself to another poet. i found myself taking out the book in an elevator for Alternating Currents because it was so good.

[Ronald Wise · Rating 2 out of 5]

Light poetry which presented some pleasant ambient imagery, but did little else for me. This collection came to my attention from a tribute to Salter's birthday (15 August 1954) on Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac.

[Husam Amoury · Rating 5 out of 5]

great book

[Mills College Library]

811.54 S177k 1999

[C · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am really far behind on putting up reviews for the books that I have read this year, so I am leaving only the star ratings for a few. Strangely, I feel quite guilty about that... But the longer I leave it, the less the possibility that I will actually update with what I have read. So here we are.

I loved the poems "Alternating Currents" and "Marco Polo" but the rest of this collection just wasn't for me.