“Why do I tell you these things”: A Rail Reading curated by Claire DeVoogd

Douglas Crase was named a MacArthur fellow in 1987. His book The Revisionist was nominated for a National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award. His collected poems, The Revisionist and The Astropastorals, published by Nightboat, was a Book of the Year 2019 in the Times Literary Supplement and Hyperallergic. His collected essays, On Autumn Lake, was published by Nightboat in 2022. He lives in New York and Carley Brook, Pennsylvania.

Chris Nealon is John Dewey Professor in the English Department at Johns Hopkins. He has written three books of criticism: The Matter of Capital: Poetry and Crisis in the American Century (2011), Foundlings: Lesbian and Gay Historical Emotion before Stonewall (2001), and a collection of essays on poetry and capitalism, called Infinity for Marxists (Brill, 2023). He is also the author of four books of poetry, most recently The Shore (Wave Books), which was a finalist for the 2020 National Critics’ Book Circle Award. Another volume, All About You, will be out from Wave in 2024.

James Loop was born in 1988 in Central New York. He’s the author of three chapbooks, most recently Amatory Imitations, and the co-author with Claire DeVoogd of a play, Appletini, or the Perills of Speeche by Anonymous Botch. His poems have been published here and there on the internet and in print. He lives in Brooklyn with his husband Michael.

Claire DeVoogd is a poet. Her debut poetry collection Via is forthcoming in Fall of 2023 from Winter Editions. A chapbook, Apocalypses 1-12, was published with Belladonna* Collaborative. She co-edits a fly-by-night chapbook press, Terrific Books. Recent poetry and other writing can be found or is forthcoming in Pfeil Magazine, Prelude Magazine, and elsewhere. Right now she’s making an essay film about history, poetry and place with the filmmaker Nate Lavey.