Trompe l'Oeil (Critical Overview)

Critical Overview

From the very start of her career, Mary Jo Salter has been considered an important American poet. Her first book of poetry, Henry Purcell in Japan: Poems (1985), was reviewed in several national publications, including the New Republic, where Alfred Corn gave it a grade of "A," commenting particularly on the poetry's "achieved tone and fine-grained diction."

Phoebe Pettingell also gave Salter an "A" when reviewing her second book, Unfinished Painting, for the New Leader. The book, Pettingell wrote, "deftly embodies the imperfect, the dilemma of loss, the fragility of accomplishment." She noted that she saw in it slight improvement over weaknesses in Salter's first book.

Not all reviewers have been glowing in their praise of Salter, though those that are reluctant about her have been few. One such reviewer is William Logan of the New Criterion. Logan's review of A Kiss in Space (1999) found Salter to be too timid of a writer. "The good poems are few enough," he wrote. "Salter doesn't take chances, and settles too easily for well-mannered, well-manicured poems."

The praise for Open Shutters, the volume that contains the poem "Trompe l'Oeil," has been almost universally positive. For instance, Donna Seaman explained in her review for Booklist that "Salter's moves are so precise and gravity-defying, so astonishingly eloquent, the exhilarated reader feels as though she's watching a gymnast perform intricate, risky, and unpredictable sequences, nailing each one perfectly." Reviewing Open Shutters in the Antioch Review, John Taylor noted that Salter's poetry is like the painted-on shutters and drying clothes mentioned in "Trompe l'Oeil" in that they "display subtle surface effects: rhymes, half-rhymes, deft meters, carefully counted syllables, playful homages to traditional poetic forms. But like trompe l'oeil, her best craftsmanship ultimately guides our eyes behind the illusion, or beyond, or inside — and leaves us with wonder, with unanswerable questions."