Depression of the Zillenium

by Elle Verde

Elle Verde shares her experiences from 2019 to 2022 in her new poetry collection, Depression of the Zillenium. Each section of the book explores a unique year of circumstance and challenges: dealing with her depression, having a job deemed as an “essential worker,” coping with death in her family, violence in the news, questioning her faith, and, of course, living through and beyond the COVID pandemic. And while there are glimmers of hope, amid her people-watching and doom-scrolling, Elle tries to beautify the world around her with her words.

Early Praise for Depression of the Zillenium:

“… [T]his felt like reconnecting to an old friend while reading it—bonding through nostalgia, heartache, loneliness, and beauty. There were times where [she] captured my breath with a single line and made me sit and stare at the words [she] crafted together like crocheted mittens. Through [her] poetry people can be reminded of the complexity of the human experience- whether it be being a lonely child and watching parents grow older, dependence on seeing regular strangers at bus stops, and the exhaustion of being in community with shallow people.”

—Allison Couch, English teacher and Speech & Debate Coach

“[Elle Verde] writes poems close to poetry’s bone: in and of the body, the family, the observable world that both holds us and harms us. Torn between tenderness and torment, these poems rightly see us as a molecule of copper / set over fire.”

 —Todd Robinson, author of Mass for Shut-Ins

About the Author

Elle Verde (also known as Danielle Valverde) is an alumnus from the University of Nebraska in Omaha Creative Writing program, currently parsing life as a young adult in a post-pandemic world. She has had poems published in Plainsongs, 13th Floor Magazine, Scribe: Lincoln High School Literary Magazine, and Talented: 2012 Poetry Collection.

In this chapbook, Elle examines her experiences and relationships from living as a young adult before, through, and after the pandemic, specifically focusing on family, church, and herself. In the midst of her cynicisms, she finds moments of beauty and nostalgia in the mundane. Elle currently lives in Lincoln, Nebraska. In her spare time, she likes to crochet, draw, and paint.

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Notes from the American Epicenter

by David Belmont

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.

Enjoy a video of David reading from the book:

David Belmont — A Featured Poet on The Poetry Box LIVE (April 2021)

About the Author

David Belmont is a mixed media artist and community organizer living in New York City. He writes memoir, short fiction and poetry, as well as instrumental music. His work has appeared in The Poeming Pigeon, Wildflower Muse and FishFood Magazine. He is currently co-music director of the Castillo Theatre. He has been a professional musician for 50 years. His publicly available recorded output since 1999 can be found on Spotify, iTunes and Amazon.

<https://davidbelmontwriter.wordpress.com>

Early Praise for World Gone Zoom:

David Belmont is a man of many talents—musician, ballot access expert, postmodern philosopher, wise guy.  In recent years, David began writing fiction. Yet the Coronavirus brought out the poet in him, and he brings out a mixture of emotions, ponderings and sardonic aphorisms that help us take a new look at what we’ve just been through.

     In World Gone Zoom, we experience the pandemic from the viewpoint of someone who is uncompromised and dedicated not to truth-telling but to life-exposing. Part Ferlinghetti, part Rock ‘n Roll, David’s poetry is meant to be read out loud, almost sung.  His observations will sting, bite, hypnotize and make you laugh all at the same time.  It’s the kind of laughter that makes you uncomfortable, as it should. In Zoom he brings the music with him and hits some much needed dissonant notes.

—Caroline Donnola, chair, Creative Writing Department, UX at the All-Stars Project

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

World Gone Zoom, David Belmont’s powerful reflection of the COVID world is like looking down a microscope into our transmuted lives under virus and when he strikes a personal note in “Harry Grimes” and “The Corner Store” our humanity is deeply touched. The powerful “Americans in Conversation” also has a simplicity that evokes the deteriorating heartbeat of the country. And Belmont’s pointed distilling of observance and emotion into notes, like his musical references, are both consumable and long lasting; his rhythms urging you to pick up drums and beat to the pulse of the city. As the directness of his words construct a range of emotions, World Gone Zoom, a must read, carries us along Belmont’s four-month roadmap of the shifting COVID world.

—Marc Maislen, director, New Visions Arts

David Belmont takes us on a surprisingly heart-warming and heart-wrenching journey through the 2020 pandemic in his book of poems. Throwbacks to other times, other genres, a cacophony of emotions and memories (recent and long past) fill the pages in his sparse and thoughtful verse. World Gone Zoom captures and expresses thoughts/feelings/reflections that we all may have but gives them the light of day with both poetic dexterity and musical sensibility (and history) making it a true gift to read.

—Cathy Salit, author, Performance Breakthrough

america has gone/ from red and blue/ to black and blue David Belmont says, and he’s right. World Gone Zoom is a collection of true tales about living in New York City during the time it acquired the name “epicenter.” World Gone Zoom is up-to-date and comes with a soundtrack. Listen to it. Glisten with it. Someday it will be history. We hope.

—Gary Phillips, Poet Laureate of Carrboro, North Carolina

With heart aflame and the eyes of a hawk, musician and writer David Belmont swoops— masked—through New York City in pandemic lockdown, picking up strands of hope, fear and wry humor, and plaiting them into what he calls a poetic diary of the times. World Gone Zoom: Notes from the American Epicenter is Belmont’s debut poetry collection. With its steady beat and soaring riffs, there’s not a word out of place.

     We scratch/ our heads/ wearing gloves, Belmont writes in “How Long Blues,” as he observes the sudden changes overtaking his city during the spring and summer of 2020. Worldwide revolution, New York politics and economic dislocation are the big topics in World Gone Zoom; cherry blossoms raining on police cars and neighbors/ washing their/ paper bags/ with bleach among the smaller flourishes.

—Nan K. Chase, author, Lost Restaurants of Asheville

Poetry is the ideal form for a diary of the pandemic.  Belmont voices the uncertainty of each day, the complexity of our lives upended and illuminated by the inescapable impact of the virus. His question: What follows pause? Play? Fast forward? Rewind? In Belmont’s poetry—all of the above. Don’t look here for a linear story of a pandemic—or even a moment’s thoughts—and you will find a little humor, a little philosophy and plenty of politics. Ordinary people of the world unite—you have nothing to lose and a world to rebuild.

—Christine Helm, faculty, East Side Institute

David Belmont’s writing beautifully captures the nuances of this unique time—the sights, sounds and emotions that we will crave to revisit, process and reflect upon. The subject at hand is dark and heavy but David’s writing, filled with sensitivity, is somehow light and refreshingly witty. I found my eyes dancing down the page, wanting to read more despite that we are still amongst these challenging times.  Generations to come will beg for details and we can return to David’s poignant words to honor a time that, for better or for worse, has shaped our history.

—Liz Carlson, founder, Common Point Acupuncture

David Belmont has written a collection of poems with a rock n roll heart, but with bebop wit. The rocker roots are obvious in the epigrams that set up most of the poems, along with pop-up allusions throughout (i hope we’ve stabbed it/with our steely knives). Those legacy linkages are followed by arena choruses that are as fresh as newly sprayed graffiti: coronavirus on tour, social distancing on fluid parade. But what I found especially arousing in Belmont’s latest work is an edginess in cadence and tonality that is like some Dizzy Gillespie solos.  (A cool cat like Lenny Bruce maybe, but more spare.) These jab at you (sports stadiums/ now empty foxholes), unbalance you (the lord of the flies/ family book club), and open your ears to alternative ways of keeping time (get tested/ quantify/ uncertainty). World Gone Zoom performs the pandemic with a musicality that reverberates with both rock and jazz.

—Don Rubin, Professor Emeritus, Communication, Education, & Linguistics, University of Georgia

The post World Gone Zoom: Notes from the American Epicenter appeared first on The Poetry Box.

Virus Poems by Pasquale Trozzolo

The COVID-19 pandemic had us all sheltering at home, and with all that shelter comes time to reflect, and with all that reflection comes truth. From that truth, if we are lucky, comes poetry. Before the Distance visits what we miss, our longing for whatever normal once was. It also visits our fears and helps us conquer them. And yes, among our longing and fears there is optimism and hope that all the missing will be for good. For good: that would be good, maybe even better than Before the Distance.

About the Author

Pasquale Trozzolo is an entrepreneur and founder of Trozzolo Communications Group, one of the leading advertising and public relations firms in the Midwest. In addition to building his business he also spent time as a race car driver and grad school professor. Now with too much time on his hands, he continues to complicate his life by living out as many retirement clichés as possible. He’s up to the p’s. Before the pandemic Trozzolo only shared his poems with a handful of close friends. Since sheltering-at-home he has begun to share what he calls Virus Poems.

<pasqualetrozzolo.com>

All author royalties during the pre-sale period are being donated to JDRF. Learn more about their work to find better treatments, preventions and a cure for type 1 diabetes here:

Early Praise for Before the Distance:

Before the Distance will take you farther than you thought you had energy to travel in a pandemic . . . to memories you didn’t know you had, and through longings you kept secret, even from yourself. It will take you back to the color blue and to the fragrance of lost love. The collection both inhabits and sets free the goblins of uncertainty: free-floating worry, off-kilter encounters, mind games, and coping skills. We can tell Trozzolo is not a young man. He knows shortcuts. With sure-footed prose, he takes us by the hand and shows us to shelter, in places like backyards and morning kisses and winter’s end. You will leave his verse infected by questions: “When is my party?,” “Does dust make choices?,” “What wonder could have flowed?” And eventually, “Did you find your way home?”

—Becky Blades, author Do Your Laundry or You’ll Die Alone

Pasquale Trozzolo’s Before the Distance is an invitation. Here, we enter the life of a fully lived man in a time of social and global upheaval. But unlike today’s social media or news feeds, this is not a rant, and it is not a call for anything. Rather, it’s an introspective dialogue between peace and chaos, love and instability, joy and fear. Like a conversation, the poet casually speaks to us, sharing his innermost self as if we’re gathered around the table, each truth spoken in the shape of a stanza. They’re measured words that carry tenderness and purpose, and they examine the state of our place in the world, the doubts we all carry, the rites of passage we must go through, and the social norms we must now question more than ever in response to COVID. Ultimately, Trozzolo reminds us that we are not in control, and that we are simply navigating our circumstances as best we can. The poet writes, “Everything seems so big and hard and dangerous/ that we often forget the scale—the one that measures us like a pebble of sand.” In this gorgeous debut chapbook, we are reminded to look at our catastrophes and celebrations not as good or bad, but simply, as reality.

—Alan Chazaro, author of Piñata Theory and This Is Not a Frank Ocean Cover Album

ENJOY PASQUALE READING FROM HIS NEW BOOK:

PASQUALE TROZZOLO — A Featured Poet on The Poetry Box LIVE (Jan 2021)

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