Zoom Rooms
Poems
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Zoom Rooms
Narrated by:
Hillary Huber, John Lee, Nicholas Guy Smith
Buy Now for £6.48
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Narrated by:
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Hillary Huber
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John Lee
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Nicholas Guy Smith
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By:
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Mary Jo Salter
Summary
In Zoom Rooms, Mary Jo Salter considers the strangeness of our recent existence, together with the enduring constants in our lives.
The title poem, a series of sonnet-sized Zoom meetings—a classroom, a memorial service, an encounter with a new baby in the family—finds humor and pathos in our age of social distancing and technology-induced proximity. Salter shows too how imagination collapses time and space: in “Island Diaries,” the pragmatist Robinson Crusoe meets on the beach a shipwrecked dreamer from an earlier century, Shakespeare’s Prospero. Poems that meditate on objects—a silk blouse, a hot water bottle—address the human need to heal and console. Our paradoxically solitary but communal experiences find expression, too, in poems about art, from a Walker Evans photograph to a gilded Giotto altarpiece.
In these beautiful new poems, Salter directs us to moments we may otherwise miss, reminding us that alertness is itself a form of gratitude.
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Critic reviews
“Salter pairs her exceptional formal deftness with arch insouciance, bringing both rigor and wit to subtly provocative poems that revel in human ingenuity and parse fear, loss, and sorrow. . . . [A] wryly illuminating suite of sonnets about life on the screen . . . Salter, who can feel Audenesque, is a supremely incisive ekphrastic poet. . . . These are poems of piquant insight and artistry.” —Donna Seaman, Booklist
“Salter’s poems are impeccably crafted.” —Beverley Bie Brahic, The Times Literary Supplement
“Mary Jo Salter’s use of poetic forms and her characteristic surprising line breaks infuse her work with an element of play. For all that must be endured in an individual life and in the world, there is still beauty, goodness, and hope to be found.” —Lindsey Weishar, Ploughshares
“A thorough pleasure. . . . Timely and delightful. . . . Salter addresses the bewildering present moment while reminding of past (and future) pleasures. Salter conjures a rich cast of characters and literary allusions, her fine ear on display at every turn.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"What I so admire about Salter’s work is that directness never comes at the expense of deep thought, nor does a baseline cheerfulness and willingness to be persuaded by life’s pleasure exist without acknowledgement of senselessness and strife . . . Salter captures how our experiences of beauty aren’t quite articulable and implicitly challenge our understanding of time's passing." —Maya C. Popa, Poetry Society of America ("The Poet's Nightstand")
“Salter’s poems are impeccably crafted.” —Beverley Bie Brahic, The Times Literary Supplement
“Mary Jo Salter’s use of poetic forms and her characteristic surprising line breaks infuse her work with an element of play. For all that must be endured in an individual life and in the world, there is still beauty, goodness, and hope to be found.” —Lindsey Weishar, Ploughshares
“A thorough pleasure. . . . Timely and delightful. . . . Salter addresses the bewildering present moment while reminding of past (and future) pleasures. Salter conjures a rich cast of characters and literary allusions, her fine ear on display at every turn.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"What I so admire about Salter’s work is that directness never comes at the expense of deep thought, nor does a baseline cheerfulness and willingness to be persuaded by life’s pleasure exist without acknowledgement of senselessness and strife . . . Salter captures how our experiences of beauty aren’t quite articulable and implicitly challenge our understanding of time's passing." —Maya C. Popa, Poetry Society of America ("The Poet's Nightstand")
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