Marking a Salt Ridge

Most books of poetry either greet us with the expected lineaments or else ask that we modestly reorient ourselves towards the slightly unfamiliar. Emily Martin's "Marking a Salt Ridge" is that rare book that seems actually to reconfigure sites of poetic writing and reading—to find new nodes and wormholes in the graphic text. More impressively still, it locates the points at which its medium appears to buckle into the refulgence of the plastic arts, turning recursive cadence and motif into a paint-like material through which all of the richly textured pentimenti are visible. A spectacularly conceived and executed book, as well as a beguilingly moving one.