New Jersey-born poet David Messineo's ninth collection, Twenty Minutes of Calm, is his first to focus exclusively on Nature. His selection of works on "Nature, Scene and Season" range from idealized nature as painted in China in the 17th century, to the raw discomfort of a rural American winter; from a cave in Australia to the placid shores of a lake in the Pine Barrens; from the Amazon in Brazil to the rivers and hills of northern New Jersey. Messineo is widely known as the publisher and poetry editor of the award-winning Sensations Magazine. He is one of the nation's longest-serving independent literary magazine publishers, and he runs one of the longest-lasting poetry reading series still active in America, the Sensations Magazine Creative Events Series. Much of his published poetry centers on American history, and as an editor he has persuaded many other poets to create narrative and lyric poems inspired by historical events and persons. In this role he has helped shape what is now informally called The Palisades Poetry Movement. His previous books are First Impressions, Suburban Gothic, A Taste of Italy, A Taste of Brazil, Restoration, Formal, The Search for the Sapphire Robe, and Historiopticon.