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