Being a student of Monica Ferrell’s was a singularly influential time in my life. Immediately upon meeting her, I wanted to be like her: to enter a room with the same serious allure, the same unassuming self-possession. And when I first read her poems—fierce, sophisticated, sensual in every sense of the word—I didn’t want to write poems like them; I wanted to have written them myself.  Now, instead of envy, I’m overwhelmed with gratitude for her new book, The Future , which continues to teach me how we can maintain an urbane, old-soul sensibility in the mundane horror of the new world order. The poems strike the most inevitable and surprising balance among the myths and archetypes from the past, the technological artifacts of the present, and the signs of mortality and rebirth always on the horizon. Monica and I met to talk about The Future : its influences, its anxieties, and ultimately, its optimism.…