His poetical work is infused and vivified by his medical profession, his love of and expertise in contemporary art, and by the fact that his parents were Holocaust survivors.
Salcman is the author of four chapbooks, most recently, Stones in Our Pockets (Parallel Press, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2007).
Also published by Spuyten Duyvil is "Crossing the Tape," his most rececent collection of poems (2024), His poetry, though lyrical, is dense with information about cultural history, art, metaphysics, and brain theory.
His major themes and subject matter is family history and the Holocaust, experiences with patients, and his love of sailing and for the Chesapeake Bay.
David Bergman’s introductory essay to “Shades & Graces” discusses the late-life production and appreciation of Salcman’s oeuvre (3) and Meg Schoerke’s recent article in The Hudson Review (4), Poetry for a Pandemic Spring, discusses some parallels of Salcman’s poetry to early Modernists like Eliot and W.C. Williams.