Capturing the “decisive moment,’’ in Cartier-Bresson’s phrase, has always been a perilous project, made more so in these dizzying times of social media, constant disinformation, and attention spans as fleeting as the latest app or iPhone upgrade.

All the more impressive then, when writers, and editors, take the time for a more considered look at once-shattering events that have been too quickly forgotten. Such is the case with A Journal of the Plague Years: Words & Music from the Lost Days (289 pages; Blue Books). A spinoff from an online website offering takes on the immediate and long-term impact of the COVID virus, this anthology, handsomely mounted in an edition which calls to mind the artisanal care of Black Sparrow Press, features contributions from music scribes Mikal Gilmore and Pulitzer Prize-winner Tim Page (who reflects on his decision to leave his New York digs for Belgrade at the outset of the outbreak), novelists Blanche McCrary Boyd and Steve Erickson, and a host of  others whose work may be lesser known but whose voice is no less compelling.

Compiled by A Journal of the Plague Year co-editors—environmental author Susan Zakin and her cohort, musician Brian Cullman—it’s a deep dive into how political crises are ineluctably personal, as each of us dealt with the epidemic in our own way. (Again, amid the onslaught of carping election coverage by rubbernecking calumnious columnists, the death and destruction of the time now seems caught in aspic, a “Blade Runner’’ time warp—assuming you don’t know someone struggling with Long Covid or holed up in a hotel room after once again venturing overseas.)

Cherry-picking the lot is necessarily arbitrary, but here’s some offerings I found particularly striking.

“The Enigma Variations,’’ by poet and short story writer Stephen Pain, is a riveting account of his broke and brokenhearted descent into homelessness after his girlfriend dies. Wandering from Denmark to Firenze, then the Malvern Hills, “made famous in Elgar’s Variations,’’ his streetwise report recalls Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London with additional emotional weight, since Pain is dealing with necessity, not journalistic choice. Crashing on the steps of Santa Maria Novella Basilica in Firenze, he and his compadres rely on the kindness of the “unbelievably kind’’ sisters, adding: “We did not die or starve from the cold because millions believe in God.’’ There but for fortune, indeed. By the end of the tale, in an O. Henry-esque plot switch that seems to come about through the intervention of well-meaning friends, Pain finds a different kind of shelter “living in a three-star hotel…I think of Trading Places.’’

In McCrary Boyd’s essay, “It’s Always Now,’’ the perennially spirited author of The Redneck Way of Knowledge and Tomb of the Unknown Racist, a 2019 PEN/Faulkner finalist, offers a picaresque, disarmingly funny look at the internal and external challenges she has faced.

“I never imagined I’d live to be 75 years old, never even make it through my thirties because of my addiction to alcohol and drugs but here I am, 38 years sober and still breathing—somewhat uneasily—inside my layers of middle-class comfort with my wife and children,” she writes. “When my kids were smaller, we even had a minivan.”

The AA nostrums to stay in the present moment that helped her maintain sobriety prove doubly useful for her new parenting duties. “I understand that I can’t fix global warming or fix this virus…but the future belongs to the young,’’ she says. “Or, as I tell my kids, it’s your problem now. And when your future gets here, it will still be today.’’

Two other pieces (among many) also demand attention. “Frontline Diary,’’ Hailey Nicole Warner’s first-person recollection of moving to the outer Tenderloin with her small-town best friend, only to experience an unwelcome first night surprise: “like an emaciated Gandalf, there he was. In the window directly across from us, stood an old man wearing only a T-shirt. He was trembling slightly, looking right at us, and jerking off shamelessly.’’

 The seedy urban vignette moves to broader themes, as Warren, who tested positive for COVID in the interim, finds strength in her resolution, summoning memories of her father, a taxi driver in Chico who “made enough for bills and child support’’ with a side hustle as a poker player.

When the elderly lech looked like he might be a repeat offender, she warned him: “Knock it off or you know who I’ll call!’’

“Maybe that’s the silver lining of all this,’’ she writes. “Now, when I come home, tired and ready to scream, I have a target.

“I’m still not poker-faced, like my dad, but it does feel like the cards are starting to line up, in their own peculiar way.’’

And there’s “The Elders,’’ Sunnie R. Clahchischigili’s piece about the myriad hurdles the most vulnerable members of Navajo Nation in New Mexico faced in getting basic food and other life or death care. Stonewalled by tribal leaders when she raised the concerns, Clahchischigili concludes: “The reservation is my home. I have a deep connection an admiration for where my roots are planted. But it’s hard to ignore the darkness that coincides.’’

Much darkness, some light. Culliman also provides a QR coded playlist featuring everyone from Springsteen (channeling Woody Guthrie’s “I Ain’t Got No Home’’) to Mary Gauthier, Big Bill Broonzy, and Sweet Honey in the Rock. This ambitious collection offers some exit ramps, if we can find our way there.

Bird and Beckett Books will host a reading at 7 p.m., Tuesday, November 19, for A Journal of the Plague Years, featuring Maxine Chernoff, Mike Medberry, Christine Kiessling, Hailey Nicole Warner, Keith Donnell Jr., and Susan Zakin. More information here.

ZYZZYVA Contributing Editor Paul Wilner is a longtime member of the National Book Critics Circle. A book columnist for the Nob Hill Gazette, his reviews have appeared in Alta Journal, among many other
publications.