Five Readings: A Rail Reading curated by Ed Friedman

Brenda Coultas is the author of five collections of poetry, including The Tatters (Wesleyan University Press, 2014) and The Marvelous Bones of Time (Coffee House Press, 2007). Her work can be found in Bomb, The Brooklyn Rail, and the anthology Readings in Contemporary Poetry (Dia). Her new book, The Writing of an Hour, is just out from Wesleyan University Press in 2022.

Steve Levine is a poet and a navigator of the space-time continuum, where he has roamed since 1953. His writing is primarily collected in A Blue Tongue, Three Numbers, and Pure Notations (Toothpaste Press) and The Cycles of Heaven and To and For (Coffee House Press), as well as various anthologies and magazines.These days, Levine has been thinking about the innate human desire to impose order on chaos, something he has only ever been able to achieve in a poem.

Gillian McCain’s books of poetry include Tilt, Religion, and Descent of the Dolls (with Jeffrey Conway and David Trinidad). She is also the co-author (with Legs McNeil) of Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk and Dear Nobody: The True Diary of Mary Rose. In the early 90s she served as the Program Coordinator of the Poetry Project, where she originated the Friday Night Series.

Bob Rosenthal (b. 1950) is the author of Straight Around Allen: On the Business of Being Allen Ginsberg, Beatdom Books, 2019 and Cleaning Up New York, republished Little Book Room, 2016. His books of poetry include Morning Poems, Lies About the Flesh, Rude Awakenings, Viburnum, and Eleven Psalms. His plays, co-written with Bob Holman, are The Cause of Gravity, The Whore of the Alpines, Bicentennial Suicide, and Clear The Range.

Ed Friedman is the author of eleven books of poetry and prose, including Mao & Matisse, Drive Through the Blue Cylinders, and Two Towns, all of which were published by Hanging Loose Press. He was the Artistic Director of the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church from 1987-2003.