About
Our rational nature is to ask questions and to understand. We piece together childhood events, relationships, connection with nature, expressions of culture, and human fragility. What does it all mean? The collection of poems, Age of Innocence, starts off with childhood where the child is shielded from the world. The encounter with nature opens the path to metaphysical reflection while relations undergo reanalysis, reassurance, and rejection. Cultures may surprise and delight, but also confuse and disturb. What is the emotional “impact” over time? Innocence is progressively shattered as one discovers poverty, loneliness, and discrimination. The adult becomes the innocent “patient.” Is there refuge behind clinic doors? Fragmented, the person blurs reality and illusion and seeks healing.
Endorsements
“Age of Innocence is a lyrical contemplation of the reaches, limitations, and possibilities of human existence. With rich and evocative strokes of his poetic brush, David Bellusci invites you to journey with him via memory and imagination as he revisits his travels and encounters around the globe, where you, too, can experience the sensory gifts of nature, contemplate the nostalgic spaces of your world and mind, and reflect and dream about sacred and mysterious/unknown spaces. . . . Age of Innocence is a beautiful and poignant reflection on the timeless rhythms of being, existing, searching, exploring, and living.”
Rosanna Micelotta Battigelli, author of La Brigantessa, 2019 Gold IPPY Award Winner for Historical Fiction
“David Bellusci’s Age of Innocence is a collection of free verse poems that explore a rich geography of emotions ranging from intimate private longings, to experiences of diverse cultures through travel, to the horrors of war. Bellusci’s free verse forms are a varied garden. He artfully sets his compressed images in white space, creating breathing room and inviting the reader into these chambers of experience, to listen, think, and make connections.”
Vic Cavalli, Professor of Creative Writing, Trinity Western University, and author of The Road to Vermilion Lake
“Age of Innocence is a wondrous book of poetry. Reading these poems is akin to sitting under a front porch at twilight and breathing in the refreshing scent of rain-cooled earth. In these troubled times, this is a book of poetry that soothes the soul, evokes all manner of emotions, and lingers in the mind as a beacon of hope.”
Rhonda G. Williams, author of The Naming of Girl
Rosanna Micelotta Battigelli, author of La Brigantessa, 2019 Gold IPPY Award Winner for Historical Fiction
“David Bellusci’s Age of Innocence is a collection of free verse poems that explore a rich geography of emotions ranging from intimate private longings, to experiences of diverse cultures through travel, to the horrors of war. Bellusci’s free verse forms are a varied garden. He artfully sets his compressed images in white space, creating breathing room and inviting the reader into these chambers of experience, to listen, think, and make connections.”
Vic Cavalli, Professor of Creative Writing, Trinity Western University, and author of The Road to Vermilion Lake
“Age of Innocence is a wondrous book of poetry. Reading these poems is akin to sitting under a front porch at twilight and breathing in the refreshing scent of rain-cooled earth. In these troubled times, this is a book of poetry that soothes the soul, evokes all manner of emotions, and lingers in the mind as a beacon of hope.”
Rhonda G. Williams, author of The Naming of Girl