Salter's Unfinished Painting (1989) is a collection of poems that take a rather fearless look at the passage of time and such vital experiences as impermanence, family, friends, love, death, and memory. This collection won the Lamont prize in poetry.

The poem "Trompe l'Oeil" comes from Salter's collection Open Shutters (2003) and served as the inspiration for the book's title. Many of the poems in that book are reminiscent of ideas presented in "Trompe l'Oeil." In particular, the final poem, "An Open Book," reminds one of the central theme that things are not always what they seem: the title refers to Muslims praying at a funeral, with palms turned up as if an invisible book were present.

Salter studied at Harvard under Elizabeth Bishop and her writing has been compared to Bishop's. Elizabeth Bishop: The Complete Poems, 1927—1979, published by Farrar, Straus...