PRESOCRATIC BLUES by Joel Bettridge

Description

Poetry

2009

“In PRESOCRATIC BLUES the presocratics walk among us, obsessed with the everyday: the rain, the bar, the blues. And the poems that result are full of correspondence, of discovery in the Spicerian sense. These are poems that remind us that behind every simple moment is a larger question about the universe and humanities place in it”–Juliana Spahr. “In PRESOCRATIC BLUES, Joel Bettridge takes us back home, back to that poor old actuality at the pre-Socratic horizon of thought and matter. But we are no happier for it. We go down to the river, a Heraclitan flux that just keeps rolling, witness to despair and wicked deeds. These are sharply intelligent poems, full of acerbic wit, absurdity, and heartbreak.”–Devin Johnston

Joel Bettridge is the author of two books of poetry, THAT CULTURAL SOCIETY (The Cultural Society, 2007) and PRESOCRATIC BLUES (Chax Press, 2009), as well as the critical study, Reading as Belief: Language Writing, Poetics, Faith (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). He co-edited, with Eric Selinger, RONALD JOHNSON: LIFE AND WORKS (National Poetry Foundation, 2008). Currently he is an Assistant Professor of English at Portland State University.