The timeless and timely intersect in poems about our unique historical moment from the prizewinning poetIn 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 sonnetsized Zoom meetingsa classroom a memorial service an encounter with a new baby in the familyfinds humor and pathos in our age of social distancing and technologyinduced 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 Shakespeares Prospero Poems that meditate on objectsa silk blouse a hot water bottleaddress 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