January 28, 2007

Linda Russo & Joel Bettridge

Sunday, January 28
7:30 pm

New American Art Union
922 SE Ankeny

$5 suggested donation


Linda Russo is a graduate of the poetics program at SUNY Buffalo, and
teaches at the University of Oklahoma. Her books include MIRTH (Chax
Press, 2007), secret silent plan (curricle patterns, 2001), and o going
out
(Potes & Poets, 1999); while in Buffalo she coedited verdure
magazine. The excerpt below, along with other poems, can be found in the
online magazine Jacket (issue 28).

Joel Bettridge's first book of poems, That Abrupt Here, is forthcoming
from The Cultural Society Press, and he is currently editing a
collection of essays on Ronald Johnson for the National Poetry
Foundation's Life and Work series. He teaches at Portland State University.


from Remedies of Love (After Ovid)

Here is love and peace
except that I am wounded
and have no faith.
I want to be taught in the school,
like a scholar, to itemize
my booty, but I'm much too nice to
be bothered and besides
I am wounded
and troubled and
delighted and aroused and appalled.

— Linda Russo


For All Appearance

Impressed into affection
after all
the kind of talk we
come to expect to hear from
elected officials and

bedfellows
for example
To make palatable

my choices of
formal organization
a problem of
your neckline and what it
suggests of what I’m sure

are any number of

personal qualities
The dilemma of using
pathology

for bedding As if
I could repent of
my wish for my need of

repentance
Indecorous a one type of
allusion standing

in for another
something like
to cite an instance
Bets placed on
naming

indiscernible parts of speech

— Joel Bettridge