SOURCE: "Among Lovers, Among Friends," in The Kenyon Review, Vol. XVII, No. 2, Spring 1995, pp. 147-53.

In the following excerpt, Russell illustrates her appreciation of Jordan's Haruko/Love Poems.

Both Ted Berrigan and June Jordan have shown an inclination to see themselves as outsiders from the literary elite, defined by such external rewards as prestigious grants and New Yorker publication. For Berrigan, the distinguishing criteria might be class and circle of friends, while for Jordan, they are race (black), politics (radical), and sexuality (ambiguous). According to Alice Notley, "Ted came from a working-class background and was very realistic about choices in America. You weren't poor if you had gone to college. On the other hand, you would not get certain kinds of poetic recognition in your lifetime if you had gone to Something State rather than Harvard; or if you hadn't involved yourself in one of what he called...