Edison explains his phonograph:
Your words are preserved in tinfoil and will come back upon the application of the instrument years after you are dead in exactly the same tone of voice you spoke them in…This tongueless, toothless instrument, without larynx or pharynx, dumb voiceless matter, nevertheless mimics your tones, speaks with your voice, utters your words and centuries after you have crumbled into dust, will repeat…every fond fancy, every vain word that you chose to whisper against this iron diaphragm.
–From Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill
Calling Edison, because the lights went out
in the storm, batteries run down on every
contraption we fancy to keep us current
and a paucity of candles, oil lamps
sold at a garage sale years ago after we
lived through Y2K, and ourselves with
naught but a match and the gas burner
lit for coffee -at least that, and the sun
coming up on another uncertain day,
glorious glistening green, there’s that,
and your voice uttering your words recalling
your tinfoil laughter before sleep, can we capture
this in the absence of workable equipment,
our insular half acre world, this time and place,
like other times and places in the story
of humankind, when the air was electric
(as always) with a possible future,
a probable disaster, and the sound of singing
from windowsills, kisses and coughs, thunder
in the distance, the wind in the trees.
Early Morning Poems 