Friday Book Review: Blunt Trauma by Jason Ryberg and Iris Applequist

Midtown poets Jason Ryberg and Iris Applequist each take the mic for a turn tonight during the Riverfront Reading at Writers Place beginning at 8 p.m. Poet Lea A. Eliot is also scheduled to appear. Ryberg and Applequist will likely read at least a few selections from their book Blunt Trauma, (94 pages, Spartan Press, $15)

I have seen both of these poets read, usually together. Ryberg’s roving performance style, coupled with the crassness that characterizes his often self-effacing writing, can be off-putting in the flesh. Absorbing his words from the page is better. And he still manages to get right in your face — figuratively — through cuss words, capitalization and beer-stained pronouncements of futility.