Review: Saltfront Vol. 3
Book Reviews
Saltfront Vol. 3
Various Authors
Self-Released
Street: 02.24
The third edition of Saltfront continues to inspire with its assortment of environmentally charged works of poetry, photographs, essays and short stories. For this particular issue, the writers and editors center their works around the idea of “the human undone,” which explores spiritual and physical decay as a means of confronting nature. Thus, each piece expresses a unique struggle between humanity and the natural world. To pick just one consistent idea, quite a few of these struggles are found in our language. In no particular order, Charlie Malone writes, “The world shrinks to the size of my vocabulary”; Corinne Lee Greiner proposes the lyriletter out of the beautiful quality of polysynthetic language; Natalie Young flirts with the taxonomy of weeds; Scott Abbott talks circles in a desert bar, and pretty soon, I’m almost begging for the wordless existences of the purely physical. Luckily, however, the book is incessantly reeling me back in with its many strong, cynicism-free voices. The people at Saltfront are keeping up to their task, and if you happen to pass this collection in your travels, make sure to leave a little bit of room on your shelf. –Nic Smith