A few years ago, the publisher Alfred A. Knopf started a program to celebrate Poetry month—this month—by e-mailing a poem a day to those of us who signed up for the service. I always forget all about it until the next April 1 rolls around, at which time I start receiving the first of 31 daily poems.<\/p>\n
Today’s e-mail contained the title poem from Mary Jo Salter’s A Phone Call to the Future: New & Selected Poems<\/i><\/a>, which seemed relevant to those of you who wander here. I won’t reprint the entire poem, but if the opening section below intrigues you, you can listen to it read by the author in its entirely here<\/a>.<\/p>\n Here’s how it begins:<\/p>\n 1. Waiting for letters. The phone rings: you’re not there. Waiting for dinner. You bake things in the oven. The patience of the past.
\nWho says science fiction
\nis only set in the future?
\nAfter a while, the story that looks least
\nbelievable is the past.
\nThe console television with three channels.
\nBlack-and-white picture. Manual controls:
\nthe dial clicks when you turn it, like the oven.
\nYou have to get up and walk somewhere to change things.
\nYou have to leave the house to mail a letter.<\/p>\n
\nYou’ll never know. The phone rings, and you are,
\nthere’s only one, you have to stand or sit
\nplugged into it, a cord
\nconfines you to the room where everyone
\nis also having dinner.
\nHang up the phone. The family’s having dinner.<\/p>\n
\nOr Mother does. That’s how it always is.
\nShe sets the temperature: it takes an hour.<\/p>\n
\nThe typewriter forgives its own mistakes.
\nYou type on top sheet, carbon, onion skin.
\nThe third is yours, a record of typeovers,
\nclotted and homemade-looking, like the seams
\non dresses cut out on the dining table.
\nThe sewing machine. The wanting to look nice.
\nGirls who made their dresses for the dance.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n