Russell is a master of synthesis, one who, like Walt Whitman, actively sought to "contain multitudes" through his work. As a poet, I find a deep lyrical power in Russell's music, a music which derives much of its influence and shape from 20th century poetic forms. William Carlos Williams, one of America’s first poets to successfully foreground American idioms in poetic expression, and to compose "by breath" (a composition practice Russell came to identify with through his friend, the poet Allen Ginsberg), sets the stage for Russell's own poetic genius.

I am also attracted to Russell as an artist of versions. Like both Whitman and his many-versioned Leaves of Grass and Emily Dickinson, who wrote the major portion of her work through letters, and on loose scraps of paper, Russell resisted settling on a particular version of his recorded compositions, and often remixed his songs hundreds of times until settling on a version for commercial release. When he finally did decide on a version it was with much self-criticism and doubt.

To not settle on a particular version of a poem or music composition is––to quote the title of Susan Cameron's book on Emily Dickinson––to "choos[e] not choosing." To choose not choosing is to defer the determination of a final product and to prioritize instead processes. In Russell's work, the work of art would often seem a pure means––a principle in keeping with Russell's Buddhist background, and perhaps also with his having been raised in the rural landscape of the American Mid-west (a landscape of long distances and durations). In Russell's commitment to a poetics of process/pure means, he is not unlike a long line of artists and poets in the 20th century who emphasized process and procedure over end products and may thus be seen as precedents for Russell's work: Gertrude Stein, Maya Deren, Jackson Mac Low, John Cage, Robert Creeley, Barbara Guest, Philip Whalen, Larry Eigner and many other names come to mind.