Poetry. "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.