Salt Memory

The tragi-comedy of American Culture - and its literature- is its obsession with the great and lordly "I". The poems of Salt Memory go another way, looking for escape out of the self into the complex realities of community, nature and love. That vision is given authority by Sweeney's inventive imagery, playful and inventive use of form, and rich music. But it is the finely-honed emphatic consciousness of these poems that seem most singular in Salt Memory - and at this moment in our infant century, most necessary.