Sunday skaters1994

In her first collection since the Lamont Prize-winning Unfinished Painting, Mary Jo Salter gives us subtle, witty, and moving poems that reflect a woman's travels through love, family, time, and place. Here are a pair of beautiful lovers on the Boulevard du Montparnasse and a woman in "nice-mother shorts" buying ice cream for six little boys and pondering the question "What do women want?" Here's a warm impassioned evening in Rome and a series of cloudy crystalline afternoons in Iceland. In a tone that is by turns playful ("Young Girl Peeling Apples"), rueful and wise in a long benediction for a young couple getting married, compassionate about a quarrel overheard in a restaurant, and tender ("Lullaby for a Daughter"), these poems encompass a broad range of melody and tempo. The book culminates in a pair of multifaceted, bittersweet portrayals of American icons - Thomas Jefferson and Robert Frost. The poet is captured as he approaches his forties, at that inspiriting moment when - impoverished and still far from famous - he is preparing to enter a world of public acclaim and private tragedies. The ex-President is seen musing over his long life, notably his sojourn in Paris just before the French Revolution, when the charms and romance of the Old World contend with his loyalties to the New. In Sunday Skaters, herself showing a skater's economical and powerful grace, Salter moves here and beyond, over a glittering terrain.