It’s basically a snapshot of that time in my life, which is kind of cool now when it feels so far away. It’s almost a nostalgia thing at this point. At the time I was reading a lot of Frank O’Hara and free-writing in coffeeshops, but not ordering coffee. I’d say the confessional part is apt. Some of this stuff is really personal, like the one about downloading porn with my girlfriend in a cafe. I was living in my head a lot and emptying the loneliness out.

The interview, which reveals an interesting and organic perspective on process (something to constantly be thinking about for National Poetry Month!!!) is all too brief, but teases enough of Salier’s wit to have us greedily headed over to Night Bomb Press to get “Letters From Robots.” You should too.

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Salier is a straight ahead, “no ideas but in things” poet and many of the poems in wikipedia says it will pass are narrative vignettes, ones that have staunch beginnings and endings. Her work is furthermore a definite product of its technologically advanced age: some of the book’s titles include “my gmail makes you laugh so hard” and “this poem is a chatroom and you have left the chatroom”; in “what about the dinosaur problem” she writes, “i write poems in my phone and export them via bluetooth” (11). beach boys to walt disney to firefox, every word is in lower case. Punctuation is used sparingly. Yet the content of the work in the collection is—to use an ill-advised word— timeless. The speaker in nearly every poem in wikipedia says it will pass is in love or falling in love or trying to get over the fact that she is no longer in love, and this circumstance provides the reader with appealingly little respite—like the speaker, at the beginning of the collection we are also immersed in the joyful throes of a newly blossoming relationship; at the end of it we are also, tearful, forced to make the statement “when i say I don’t believe in love/ i think i don’t believe in us” (15).

As a result of this some might call Salier a poet too self-absorbed, too concerned with her world (or at least her speaker’s world, a speaker that—a la Frank O’Hara—does very much seem to be a stand-in for herself) and not the world. But to make such a contention would be missing the point, simplifying self-regard (universal) for self-obsession (egotistical). In “i like human as a word but not as a concept,” one of the best works in the short 22 page volume, the speaker reiterates and repeats the poem’s title—“i like human as a word/ i like human as a word/ but not as a concept”—before going on to assert “and not as an excuse.” I’m only human—it’s the easiest thing in the world to say after making a mistake. But in “i like human as a word but not as a concept” Salier makes clear that such an assertion is nothing more than passing the buck; it’s the fact that we’re “only human” that makes us worth knowing, worth kissing, worth loving. And to deny this is to willfully forget what being “human” truly means—or should mean.

Sleeping and dreaming also figure significantly in wikipedia says it will pass but for the book’s speaker both activities are less welcomed releases and more necessary burdens. They remind Salier’s speaker of what was. The entirety of “i found you, ms. new booty” reads:

every morning you’re not here
rapping bubba sparxxx
grabbing my flat ass
to wake me up
i grab it myself
i can’t rap
i don’t wake up (8)

“i wish it was secretaries’ day” begins with the lines, “i had a nap dream: you were selling refreshments at a play/ you stood really far away from me/ and you said i wish it was secretaries’ day/ and I said so, what, are you like a secretary now??… and you excused yourself to go to the bathroom/ and i thought you wanted me to follow you/ like for old times’ sake/ but i think you just really had to pee” (3). What Salier’s poetry lacks in ambiguity it makes up for in universality: we’ve all had this dream. And when woken from it we all feel the same way: tentative, precarious, rolling over on one side of the bed and quickly back again.

The Red Ceilings Press isn’t the biggest or most well-known press in the world and Diana Salier isn’t a household name. But her work—and wikipedia says it will pass—deserves a wider audience. Salier’s poetry captures the minutia and potential desolation of love while at the same time highlighting its giddiness, its euphoria, its fundamental loveliness. And wikipedia says it will pass is an enjoyable, engaging chapbook to read—and reread and reread. It promises greater things to come.

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Disconnection as a theme in any postmodern or contemporary art is not a new idea, but Saliers manages to write to that idea without sounding like she is trying too hard. In “holy shit i have been so lonely,” she writes, “remember when we spent / saturday drinking tea / downloading porn / on the free wifi / at the café / below your apartment” These details are presented with detachment. Two people connect over sex but pornography instead of real person-to-person sex. The literal connection here is internet connection, and can’t be connected at home; it has to be connected for free among strangers.

The collection remains focused on this idea of disconnection, and though all references to it is in a romantic love context. The first poem in Letters from Robots, “this will be a good year, i’m promised,” is also her strongest. The poem establishes the ideas that everything else will center around. The first stanza encapsulates the irony that we now have many means to communicate but almost none to connect. She writes, “we sign off all transmissions / ‘cheers’ / instead of ‘love.’” She follows this idea in the second stanza with,

i’ve been thinking a lot about outerspace
i’ve been thinking about how
everyone is deadandnotdead
at the same time

As evidence, she describes walking in skeleton socks to meet her lover. Later, she asks to meet her lover in a “jungle motel.” To me, a motel, a place designed for transience, is a perfect metaphor for the lack disconnect she is ultimately describing. We are conditioned to move on quickly. Immersion in antithetical to our contemporary existence and mindset, an idea further evidenced by the end of the poem: “i’ve never written a poem / about a girl i loved / while i still love her” The poem is beautifully compressed, lyrically powerful, and a fitting beginning to the collection.

The title poem, which comes ten poems in, is also incredibly strong. In a masochistic twist to the theme of loneliness and disconnect, she writes, “i stay up doing nothing / because it makes me / feel alone”The poem ends,

i think some days
you just want someone
to write home about you
just want someone
to help you with
your oxygen mask
before putting on
their own

This idea is simple and deceptive. Once unpacked, it shows more layers than it first seems, which is what allowed me to forgive an earlier line that uses the poetic cliché of comparing the world to a snow globe. This poem is one of the few that does not specify that the longing for another person is the longing for a romantic partner. But what is the speaker longing for? The directions of putting on your own mask before helping another is aimed at parents and children. But the speaker can’t want a parental figure since the lines before mentioning wanting someone to write home about “you.” Whom else would you write home to if not parents? I can’t tell if these lines are ambiguous or just confused, but they fascinate me nonetheless. Ordinarily, I would want clarification. Muddy poetry is weak poetry. Here, though, the confusion seems to reinforce the content, the struggle of a speaker who wants to connect to someone enough that the person puts the speaker’s safety before her own, yet the speaker also stays awake doing nothing to feel alone. The speaker is conflicted, like the poem, like the human condition she is describing. It all works for me, and I very much appreciate it.

However, if cohesion to her theme of disconnection is the book’s greatest strength, filler poems must be its weakness. Salier can craft a compelling poem. So many poems in Letters from Robots, however, do not live up to the promise of the first poem. Letters from Robots should be an amazing chapbook instead of a full volume with so many less than stellar poems. Sometimes a weak poem can add significant value to a volume since the weak poems add contrast to make the strong poems even more sterling. This is not the case here. For example, the poem “love love” takes a painfully obvious and overused tennis pun and tries to fashion it into poetry. The entire poem reads:

on the tennis court
everyone is a loser
who has
love

As a young tennis player, I once had a t-shirt that said this same idea with less subtlety. It read, “Love Means Nothing.” I wore it on dates because I was an unbelievable jerk in high school. The point remains, though, that these lines and this idea are not poetry, and Salier proved many times in the collection that she is capable of more finesse and depth. This is beneath her, and it isn’t the only poem in the collection that offers a few lines instead of thought instead of craft. She makes another groan-worth pun in the poem “i lose all my faculties,” which reads in its entirety, “sometimes i’m like a deserted high school / where all the teachers have left for the summer / or gone away on strike.”

In the end, despite the many reasons that I personally should not care for Letters from Robots, I found some of the poems incredibly interesting and impactful. Salier offers a unique voice with timely insight, such as when she uses the Mayan prophesy for the end of the world this December as an excuse to make more love and to party. What elevated this collection above what normally I classify as poetry deal-breakers is Salier’s genuineness. I believe her voice. I believe she is, above all else, sincere. I would remove all but twenty poems in this collection, but those twenty are inspired and brilliant enough to make the entire thing worthwhile.

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