Make it new Pound said, and Christopher Salerno does, though the playfulness, wit and surprises in these poems remind me of the mid-career poets I most admire: Denise Duhamel, Tony Hoagland, Dean Young...We're alone in our best visions Salerno says but, as always, the best visions of the poet offer readers new ways of seeing. Whirligig is one of the most distinctive first books of poems I've read in decades. Ed Ochester, Editor, Pitt Poetry Series