Salt (Brittingham Prize in Poetry) [Paperback]

Renee Ashley (Author)

Book Description

Series: Brittingham Prize in Poetry | Publication Date: October 15, 1991

Renée Ashley describes Salt as an attempt, in part, to mythologize a period of the 1950s and early 1960s in the California Bay Area suburb where she grew up, “a racially rich, economically varied section of town east of El Camino Real—the major road and the ‘tracks’, so to speak, that one grew up on the right or wrong side of.”  Many of the poems in the collection explore Ashley’s adjustment to the East Coast after a virtual lifetime in “that one place.”  They  deal with landscape, with marriage, with the insight distance seems to lend to hindsight, with amusement, with regret. 

“Renée Ashley can tune our ears to the thoughts of a wounded sparrow, to the sibilance of snow on stone, even to the song rocks make as they thaw in spring.  .  .  .  She wakes us to an intricate, enthralling world behind, beneath, beyond the one we thought we knew, alive with particulars, laced with compassion, luminous with humor.”—Donald Finkel

Editorial Reviews

Review

Winner of the 1991 Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award

About the Author

Renée Ashley teaches creative writing at Ramapo College in New Jersey and at Rockland Center for the Arts in New York.  Her poems have been published in many notable journals including New England Review,  Kenyon Review, North Atlantic Review,  and  Southern Poetry Review. 

Product Details

• Paperback: 70 pages
• Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press; First edition. edition (October 15, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0299131440
• ISBN-13: 978-0299131449
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 6.3 x 0.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,219,008 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Salt, July 17, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Salt (Brittingham Prize in Poetry) (Paperback)

These poems really touched me in that way that makes me wish I had written them myself - but glad that she did because I could never do them the same service. Salt is such a great motif in this collection. Salt like the way women sweat. Like that taste, sometimes pleasant sometimes painful of it on your lips. I ordered another copy. There's a man I'm seeing that needs to read this book.

5.0 out of 5 stars Salt is superb, June 11, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Salt (Brittingham Prize in Poetry) (Paperback)

Ashley's first collection is a must-read for anyone interested in contemporary American poetry. Her sight is unusual and strong; in these poems exist humor, landscape, monologue, strong and compelling narrative, a touch of the metaphysic, an attentive compassion and care, a tenderness as well as a brutality, enticing musics, the lyric, an eye toward the sublime. The poems are varied and yet compelling as a group, well-rendered and taut. Ashley's voice is powerful and distinct. Read Salt.