Participant

Poetry. In her new collection, PARTICIPANT Linda Russo shows how to distill and clarify perception as a method of lyric practice in order to render a world made sharp. This long poem of observation, edged with philosophy and critique, floats effortlessly across the page, yet anchors in the consciousness like a vital point on a map of a still not fully visible present and future. PARTICIPANT’s speaker worries the division between natural and built environments around her, into the undertone of the other world, while demonstrating how poetry fuses the line between being the observer and the one who makes language bring the invisible into view.–John Keene