The Expedition Sets Out

Take a sip anywhere from this pool of enigmatic yet crystal-clear words. What is it, you'll ask, this wonderful, alluring flow of thought and feeling? Where did they come from, these delicious words and beguiling images? They come from the workings of a mind-perhaps they are the workings of a mind, a mind transcribing itself in these poems. Alan Salant is many things: student of philosophy, student of math history, inquirer into the infinitely odd nature of human society and the dizzying quality of what it is actually to exist, to be alive. This poet's explorations are surreal, comic, deep, towering, and allusive, effortlessly moving from Dostoevsky, Gauss, and DNA to personal laundry. ("Sometimes that's what I think / And other times I have trouble figuring out / Which shirt to wear") Here is a new kind of poetry, an intellectual feast to nourish mind, belly, and human heart: One morning I segmented reality. It objected, of course, Only partly on religious grounds. But I have entire structures of mind, Brewed in three dreams of Descartes Beside the soft Danube By a warm stove.