Henry Purcell in Japan

by Mary Jo Salter

Poems explore themes such as love, nature, Japanese culture, and the death of John Lennon

Genres: Poetry

74 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1985

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

[John Tessitore · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mary Jo Salter is one of my favorite poets...one of my all-time favorites. Her poems have an unusual pop. They latch on to ordinary images and make them extraordinary. They sing and laugh, even when they cry. And they delight in color and language and form--including meter and rhyme. For these reasons, they live for me in a way that few poems ever do, and Salter seems more like a friend than most poets ever do. This is an early collection but when it's good, it's very very good.

[Natalie Tyler · Rating 5 out of 5]

I heard Mary Jo Salter give a poetry reading in upstate NY in 1984 or 1985 and was transfixed by her work. I purchased "Henry Purcell in Japan" and have been following her writing and her career ever since. I always buy her books when they appear.

"Dead Letters" stood out to me--a daughter coming to terms with her mother's death is, perhaps, one of the most poignant and difficult occasions. A poem about the death of a Japanese friend is also shatteringly wonderful.

Salter has not abandoned form, and her successful villanelles and sonnets are all refreshingly accessible as well as emotionally engrossing. How does she express these thoughts and emotions so perfectly? She is a dazzling stylist but never seems to be calling attention to the work itself--just the feelings or experiences that have launched it.

Salter's is a unique voice but you might enjoy her if you like the British Betjeman, Larkin, Wendy Cope, and those wonderful poets born in the 1920's: Hecht, Hollander, Wilbur, Nemerov, Donald Hall, etc. I do not mean to imply that she is old-fashioned but rather than her poems have a timelessness about them.
Keep and reread and reread again. It's worth it.