Known for her mastery of traditional forms as well as free verse, Mary Jo Salter has emerged as one of the most versatile and distinctive American poets born after 1950. In addition to demonstrating her technical acumen, her poems display the workings of a keen intellect and show a remarkable eye for detail. These details are drawn from quiet domestic settings as well as the more expansive vistas of biography and history. Whether she writes about family relationships, her travels in Japan and Iceland, the fortunes of Robert Frost, or the life of Helen Keller, Salter's poems dramatize a mind and sensibility aware of loss, always in search of illumination.

Salter was born on 15 August 1954 in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and grew up in Detroit and Baltimore. Her father, Albert Gregory Salter, fought in World War II, returned to go to college on the G.I. Bill, and eventually became...