Book Reviews

Miss Desert Inn by Ron Salisbury

Reviewed by Dorianne Laux

Miss Desert Inn. Salisbury.180Ron Salisbury’s poems in Miss Desert Inn move us from the poverty of Maine, to the grittiness of New York, from the glitter of Las Vegas, to the glamour of California’s coast, informing us of the truth about this life, harsh as it may be, sorrowful, and wondrous and brief as it is.  This is one man’s journey, and we learn as he does what it means to live with loss, with memory, with desire.  An accomplished first book, informed by the poetry of Gilbert, Hugo and Kowit, these are poems of the middle passage, where there’s sometimes a woman and a glass of wine, always a good dog nearby, and a bad but beloved cat slipping out the side door.

Dorianne Laux‘s poems have been translated into French, Spanish, Italian, Korean, Romanian, Dutch, Afrikaans, and Brazilian Portuguese. Her selected works, In a Room with a Rag in my Hand, was translated into Arabic by Camel/Kalima Press, and, most recently, Ce que nous portons (What We Carry), translated by Helene Cardona, was published in 2014 by Editions du Cygne Press. Widely anthologized in America, her work has appeared in the Best of APRThe Norton Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, and The Best of the Net; in 2014 singer/songwriter Joan Osborne adapted her poem “The Shipfitter’s Wife” for her release “Love and Hate.”  In 2001, she was invited by then United States Poet Laureate Stanley Kunitz to read at the Library of Congress. Laux directs the Program in Creative Writing at North Carolina State University and is a founding faculty member at Pacific University’s Low Residency MFA Program.

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