A Termite Memoir

The memoir chronicles poet Saltman's life from 1930s Pittsburgh and his travels and time spent in Chicago, New Orleans, Denver, where he lived for four years, San Francisco during the 1950s when Ferlinghetti was charged with selling pornography through his City Lights Bookstore when he published Allen Ginsburg's "Howl," and Saltman's college experience teaching at Sierra College in Auburn, California; at Emerson's "Kookie College," in Pacific Grove, California, an early experimental college during the early to mid-1960s, and Saltman's time spent at Claremont University Graduate School where he earned his P.h.D and befriended poet Bert Meyers. The work also chronicles his tenure at California State University, Northridge, where he taught Verse Writing and Contemporary American Literature for over 25 years, and commentary on his own work as a poet. Saltman was the recipient of two NEA Fellowships and many other awards for excellence. W.S. Merwin has this to say about Saltman's work as a poet: "Benjamin Saltman is a fine poet, a genuine one, which is saying a great deal, because I think that at anytime there is a lot of showy performance and not so much of always rather surprising welling up of the source itself. Lovely plainness, apparent plainess, with that depth beyond it." Praise for "The Book of Moss," published also by Phoenix Press: "[Saltman's] poems are wonderfully restless, always in a hurry. Benjamin Saltman can make waxing the car or just sitting in a 'cool place' a sort of sports event for the mind. Yet the poems close firmly, some about the Poet Self, some with humor and sadness about Us. Here are the lonely but warm observations of an exceptional talent: a fine collection." Reed Whittemore