World Gone Zoom

Notes from the American Epicenter

by David Belmont

Scheduled Release Date: May 18, 2021

Acclaimed essayist and musician, David Belmont takes us on a poetic journey through life under lockdown in New York City during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic and the few months following, replete with political commentary, philosophical musings and musical references.

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Who would have thought that Dylan, Lennon, Marley, Morrison, Ochs, Byrne and Donovan could have presaged a world gone zoom?  That’s the lyrical genius of New York City artist, David Belmont, who riffs off these legendary poets to conjure up a “New York tough” pandemic life—sequestered and blandly hunkered down. With simple, stark—and often very funny—imagery, David invites you into a NYC “struggling in place,” with no way home. Enjoy, savor, and smile at our human predicament.

—Janet Wootten, SVP, Rubenstein Communications

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Bayna Bayna: In-Between

by Zeina Azzam

Scheduled Release Date: May 18, 2021

Using the Arabic words bayna bayna as a nod to her Palestinian Arab heritage, Zeina Azzam’s poetry reflects on the feeling of being in-between home and exile, childhood and adulthood, wholeness and loss, and living and dying.  Her poems express a bicultural and bilingual view of the world which is at once enriching, bewildering, and beautiful.

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To be an immigrant is to come with a box of memories and expectations, tiny possessions, all that one can carry. If that person is a poet and lifts the lid, she gives us the ability to be with her as she paves her road. Zeina Azzam, through her stories, and through the integrity of language, creates a world of beauty and patience, even when ideals are shattered. Because this poet knows who she is and is secure in that, the poems are true. Each page encounters a moment where the facts are prevalent; and where passion and technique lift an unforgettable story.

—Grace Cavalieri, Maryland Poet Laureate

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Bye Bye Blackbird

by Doreen Stock

Scheduled Release Date: Apr 15, 2021

In Bye Bye Blackbird, Doreen Stock explores the last days of her 93-year-old mother, Annetta Winnick. In this theme-based suite of poems, we move in mythic time and through the moments of loss and conveyance that characterized this woman’s journey toward the end of her life—always against the background of the mother-daughter relationship.

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Doreen Stock is a master of her craft, and her newest collection of poems captures her mother’s last days and beyond with heart-wrenching grace, beauty, humanity, and artistry. Each poem is a jewel, a layered world of story, memory, love and senses, light and dark. Her work does what only the best art can: it connects readers with what it is to love, to lose, and to be fully alive in this world. You will keep this book on your shelf as a reminder of what matters, and you will want to come back to it again and again.

—Julie Fingersh, freelance journalist and writer, The New York Times and O: The Oprah Magazine

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Italian Lesson

by Dianalee Velie

Scheduled Release Date: Apr 15, 2021

While Dianalee Velie was teaching poetry in Italy, she composed these poems to reflect her love of the country and for her cousins in Santa Croce di Camerina, Sicily. Italian Lesson celebrates the sights and sounds of Italy—explorations of the local food & drink, sightseeing expeditions, and the lively spirit of the Italian people as they welcomed and shared their way of life. Come along on her Italian journey and you too will fall in love.

Inside the book, readers will also enjoy seeing photos from the journey, taken by the author’s husband, Robert J. Popp. Here are just a few samples:

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Dianalee Velie is a poet of exceptional vision and creativity.  In Italian Lesson, like a master crafter of Vino Nobile, she picks her poetic grapes, her words, with care and insight, and creates sensual, evocative and multilayer images filled with love and nostalgia not just for Italy, but humanity, nature, earth, in poems that must be savored verse by verse. Che vino perfetto! Cin cin!

—Ala Khaki, poet, author of Return

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Sophia and Mister Walter Whitman

by Penelope Scambly Schott

Scheduled Release Date: April 15, 2021

Penelope’s goldendoodle, Sophia is quite the free spirit—so much so that she reminds the poet of Walt Whitman. In this jeu d’esprit, consisting of 30 poems, we enjoy a delightful peek inside the mind of a dog through her often entertaining & insightful “conversations” and adopted philosophies of her favorite poet (after her poet-owner, of course).

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Penelope Scambly Schott’s playful poetry collection, Sophia and Mister Walter Whitman, is a delight, especially for admirers of both our companionable canine citizens and Whitman’s poetry. Poems expressed in the voice of Schott’s goldendoodle, Sophia, draw us into the illusion that somehow Sophia is not only well-versed in Whitman, but she has also adapted many of his views to her own world. Sophia’s dog world is one of joy but, perhaps unlike Whitman, she occasionally experiences guilt or self-doubt, as when she suspects there was once another beloved dog before her time, or when she gives in to her worst instincts by attacking a neighbor’s chickens. In the search for her better self, Sophia adapts some of Whitman’s lines and views. One of the pleasures of these poems is recognizing the actual words of Whitman re-purposed here to Sophia’s doggy world view.

—Barbara Drake, author of The Road to Lilac Hill

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Synapse Flies into Startle

by Sally Naylor

Scheduled Release Date: Mar 15, 2021

With each section bookended by a poetic query in this non-linear poetic exploration, Sally Naylor leads us through an unabashed journey on the nature of orgasm. Prepare for your synapses to be startled. And delighted.

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An honest, uninhibited, brave exploration of those intimate moments when we are most vulnerable, most powerful, most bestial, most human, most alone, most united, most selfish, most generous, most profane, most sacred…told with wit, deep insight, delightful quirkiness, and profound sensitivity. It speaks to our most mysterious and unexplored common denominator. A book to savor!

—Lynda Pinto Torres

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Sylvan Grove

by Barbara A. Meier

Scheduled Release Date: Mar 15, 2021

Barbara Meier may have been born in Oregon, but she grew up in Kansas, and can’t seem to get the prairie out of her system. This collection of poems is an homage her family homestead near Sylvan Grove, Kansas, and the magical times she enjoyed growing up on a farm, enjoying the kinship of cousins and grandparents.

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When I visited Kansas to share the poetry of my father, someone told me “Kansas is a state unaccustomed to literary affection; but your father loved who we are.” In that tradition of prairie patriotism, Sylvan Grove leaves no doubt this place can be loved with honest lyric skill. The poems in this book return to iconic moments of perception in a landscape where miracles yield their bounty to the steady gaze. A guide to weather describes certain effects of light as not rare, but rarely seen, and this book brings to light myriad Edenic pleasures of Kansas ground. In the work of mending, turning sod, tornado watch, windmill, firefly, wheat turning green to gold, and other magic moments, Holtz performs alchemy, turning the ordinary unseen to resonant glimpses that remain.

—Kim Stafford, author
Early Morning: Remembering My Father: William Stafford

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Building a Woman

by Deborah Meltvedt

Scheduled Release Date: Feb 16, 2021

The collection of poems Building a Woman is a trajectory of one life from girlhood to womanhood with all the complications of family, the joy of friends, grief and loss and ultimately finding lasting love. It weaves in experiences of growing up as a doctor’s doctor in California in the 1960s and 70s and the cultural expectations of women (and their reproductive lives) in the past and still today. Building a Woman also gives tribute to how we often find worth within prescribed family lives, but maybe more so through long lasting women friendships.

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Her words ring out like bells and call to us like a friend, urging us to come visit; stay a while; enjoy. —Anara Guard, author of Hand on My Heart

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