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
About the Author: Benjamin Saltman was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1927. He began writing poetry seriously in 1965. Blue With Blue, his first book of poems, published by Lillabulero Press, appeared in 1968. Since then he published seven other books: The Leaves The People, Red Hill Press, 1977; Elegies Of Place, Armchair Press, 1977; Deck, Ithaca House, 1979; Five Poems, Santa Susana Press, 1989; The Book Of Moss, 1992, Garden Street Press; The Sun Takes Us Away: New And Selected Poems, Red Hen Press, 1996; and Sleep And Death The Dream, published posthumously by Red Hen Press, 1999; The Book of Moss, the extended edition, Garden Street Press, 2016; and Alone With Everyone: The Uncollected Poems, Phoenix Press, 2018. During his life, he received many awards including two NEA Fellowships; a Chester H. Jones Foundation Award; and an Anna Rosenberg Award for a poem about the Jewish experience. His work has appeared in numerous magazines and periodicals, among them Poetry Northwest, Southern Poetry Review, The Hudson Review, Mississippi Review, The North American Review, The Iowa Review, Shirim, Poetry/LA, Bakunin, Asylum Press, and Kayak, to name a few. From 1967 to 1992, he taught verse writing and contemporary American literature at California State University, Northridge and was a visiting professor of English at Bowling Green State University, in Ohio. During his years teaching at CSUN, he lived with his wife, Helen, and three daughters, Jeanmarie, Lara, and Majorie, in Northridge, California and later, after retirement, he lived in Kensington, California near Berkeley, until his death in 1999. He also completed a memoir titled, A Termite Memoir, about his life writing poetry and his many relationships and marriage to his wife, Helen. He once wrote, "What you need to know about me you can find in my poems." This book was edited by Nicholas Campbell and Jodi Johnson.