Mary Jo Salter

Poet, playwright, essayist, lyricist. Latest collection of poems, Zoom Rooms (2022), follows The Surveyors (2017), Nothing by Design (2013), and A Phone Call to the Future (2008), which contained new work and a substantial body of poems from her previous collections: Henry Purcell in Japan (1985), Unfinished Painting (1989), Sunday Skaters (1994), A Kiss in Space (1999), and Open Shutters (2003), a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.

Collaborated as lyricist on a song cycle called Rooms of Light with jazz pianist and composer Fred Hersch, who performed it at Lincoln Center premiere in 2007. The Drift of Melancholy (2007), three Salter poems set to music for soprano and chamber orchestra by Icelandic composer Snorri Sigfus Birgisson, also premiered at Lincoln Center.

Served as staff editor at the Atlantic (1978-1980) and poetry editor at The New Republic (1992-1995), and as vice president of the Poetry Society of America (1995-2007). Co-editor with Margaret Ferguson and Jon Stallworthy of the fourth and fifth editions (1996, 2005) and with Margaret Ferguson and Tim Kendall of the sixth edition (2018) of The Norton Anthology of Poetry. Her essays and reviews have appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The New York Times Magazine, The New Republic, and the Atlantic.