Unfinished Painting

A sidewalk painter who refuses to hurry his rendition of the Birth of Venus though it threatens to rain, the late-night crying of a daughter, the unexplained suicide of a friend: Salter's ( Henry Purcell in Japan ) perceptions in this Lamont-winning collection are both accomplished and deeply felt. The poet studs the path to an emotional and mental realm with earthly and physical markers. In ``Spring Thaw in South Hadley,'' the ``long scissors of the sun'' send snow crashing from rooftops, and the passage from winter into spring is both violent and triumphant, evoking ``a sacramental joy.'' In the title poem, a man recognizes his mother in a painting she made of him, seeing ``in his flushed face how she'd / re-created there what rose / and fell in hers.'' The narrator of the autobiographical ``Dead Letters'' reads mail still being sent to her late mother, cares for the plants that were in her room when she died, and yet tries to communicate: ``I send / more letters, Mother--these despite / the answers you can't write.'' Salter's silver tongue conveys an oblique but unflinching approach to ever-vital issues--the passing of time, the perseverance of love and memory. (Mar.)