Hart is a published writer who focuses on literary themes. In the following essay, Hart examines the psychological implications behind Salter's use of visual images and word play in her poem.

Salter's poem "Trompe l'Oeil," is not, as its title suggests, only filled with illusions. It also contains beautiful visual images that take the reader to a warm and colorful Mediterranean climate and transport the reader inside and outside of the speaker's world—both the physical and the psychological. Enhancing these images are playful word games that the poet uses to add dimension. These word plays come to the reader in the form of sound and also in the structure of oppositional pairs. With these devices, the short and seemingly simple poem lives up to its title, providing not only a description of various visual imaginings but becoming a bit of an illusion in itself as the...