Mary Jo Salter

Mary Jo Salter (born August 15, 1954) is an American poet, a co-editor of multiple editions of The Norton Anthology of Poetry and professor emerita in the Writing Seminars program at Johns Hopkins University.

Life Salter was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan and was raised in Detroit and Baltimore, Maryland. She received her B.A. from Harvard University in 1976 and her M.A. from Cambridge University in 1978. In 1976, she participated in the Glascock Prize contest.

While at Harvard, she studied with the noted poet Elizabeth Bishop. She has been an editor at the Atlantic Monthly and at The New Republic.

From 1984 to 2007, she taught at Mount Holyoke College and was, from 1995 to 2007, a vice-president of the Poetry Society of America.

She has two daughters, Emily and Hilary Leithauser.

She is on the editorial board of the literary magazine The Common, based at Amherst College.

Works

Books of poetry Henry Purcell in Japan, Knopf, 1985, Unfinished Painting, Knopf, 1989, , Lamont Selection for that year's most distinguished second volume of poetry Sunday Skaters, A.A. Knopf, 1994, , nominated in 1994 for the National Book Critics Circle Award (Knopf) A Kiss in Space, Knopf, 1999, Open Shutters, Alfred A. Knopf, 2003, , named a "notable book of the year" by The New York Times A Phone Call to the Future: New and Selected Poems Nothing by Design, Knopf, 2013, The Surveyors, Knopf, 2017, Zoom Rooms, Knopf, 2022

Edited The Norton Anthology of Poetry, W. W. Norton, 1996, (co-editor)

Selected translations The Word Exchange: Anglo-Saxon Poems in Translation (W. W. Norton & Company, 2010)

Play Falling Bodies (2004)

Children's literature The Moon Comes Home (1989)

Articles The Achiever: Helen Keller by Mary Jo Salter

Awards 1981: The Frost Place poet in residence 1995–1996: Amy Lowell Poetry Travelling Scholarship 1989: Lamont Poetry Prize for the year’s most distinguished second volume of poetry - Unfinished Painting 2003: Open Shutters named a "notable book of the year" by The New York Times 2004: Meribeth E. Cameron Faculty Award for Scholarship