Only What’s Here Already: A Rail Reading Curated by Vyt Bakaitis

Poet William Benton received his early training in music and worked as a jazz piano player before becoming a writer. His poetry has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and a number of other magazines. He has published several books of poetry, most recently Backlit, as well as Exchanging Hats, a book on the paintings of Elizabeth Bishop (FSG), and Madly, a novel (Counterpoint), blurbed by James Salter, Ann Beattie, Phillip Lopate. His newest book is Eye Contact, a book of art writing.

Poet Joe Elliot is the author of Idea for a B-Movie (Free Scholar Press, 2016), Homework (Lunar Chandelier, 2010) and Opposable Thumb (subpress, 2006), as well as numerous chapbooks including You Gotta Go In It’s the Big Game, Poems to be Centered on Much Much Larger Sheets of Paper and Half Gross, a collaboration with the artist John Koos. His long poem 101 Designs for the World Trade Center was published by Faux Press as an e-book in 2003. Elliot coedited two chapbook series—A Musty Bone and Situations—and ran a weekly reading series at Biblios Bookstore in Manhattan. For many years, he made a living as a letterpress printer. He now teaches English at Edward R. Murrow High School and lives in Brooklyn with his wife, Anne Noonan, and their three sons.

Poet Jeffrey Cyphers Wright received his MFA in poetry after studying with Allen Ginsberg. Best known as a New Romantic poet, he is also a publisher, critic, eco-activist, impresario, singer/songwriter, filmmaker, puppeteer, and artist. He is author of 18 books of verse, including Blue Lyre and Party Everywhere. A book of sonnets and artwork called Doppelgängster is forthcoming from Mad Hat Press. The former publisher of Cover Magazine, Wright now publishes Live Mag!

City Country was poet Vyt Bakaitis’s first book (Black Thistle Press, NYC, 1991). He has also published Deliberate Proof (Lunar Chandelier Press, 2010) and translations of poetry from several languages, with his versions of the classic Romantics Hölderlin and Mickiewicz included in World Poetry (W. W. Norton, 1998). Two books of his translations from the Lithuanian poet Jonas Mekas have appeared: Daybooks 1970-1972 (Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs, NYC, 2003) and There Is No Ithaca (Black Thistle, 1996).