Humans

• Jeffrey Cyphers Wright (author)
• Barbara Byers (artist)
• Elæ Moss (artist)

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Radio Poems

“Not since Cocteau’s film, Orpheus, has a writer tapped into the poetic unconscious of the radio with such witty and marvelous results. Jeffrey Cyphers Wright’s ‘Radio’ plays nonstop hit poems with an energizing staccato rhythm that brings the “divine monkey business” that is New York and its many underground scenes back to life. ‘The odyssey is not easy,’ but extremely rewarding, for here you’ll find the city in all its eccentric, deviant glory. He’s both a poet and DJ for our times — riffing off sights, sounds, songs, and language to create the ultimate cultural remix!” — Elaine Equi

“You should always write with the radio on.” — Ted Berrigan

The radio is on in these lyric postings from the fringe, adding a soundtrack to the fiercely independent stance. The author includes song quotes and band names to create a new meta-text, immersed in casual memes that have been reframed. A prescient, impish persona mixes bravura with vulnerability, leading to resonant insights about universal truths.

The writing presented in ‘Radio Poems’ explores formal arrangements while maintaining an improvised feel. Urgent invocations churn between hipsterdom’s license and the canon’s hierarchies. Each linguistic musing, each recording of posture, is an existential plaint, balancing tradition and innovation.

Wit, spontaneity and erudition interact with hard-won experience, resulting in playful and durable layers of meaning. These are “ravishing” poems, devouring their subjects and situations in a spiritual onslaught.

About the Contributor(s)

Jeffrey Cyphers Wright is a poet, artist, critic, eco-activist, impresario and publisher. He initially studied with Ted Berrigan and Alice Notley at The Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church, where he also taught and served on the Board of Directors. He then received an MFA in Poetry after working with Allen Ginsberg at Brooklyn College. From 1987 to 2000 he ran Cover Magazine, the Underground National. He’s currently the art editor of Boog City and for many years was poetry reviewer for Brooklyn Rail. In 2014 he won Theater for the New City’s poetry contest. Poems have been included in numerous journals including New American Writing, Big Bridge, Sensitive Skin, Vanitas, Evergreen Review, Nostrovia, Poets Reading the News, Urban Graffiti, Brooklyn Rail, and Hanging Loose.

Recent books include Triple Crown, Sonnets, from Spuyten Duyvil and Party Everywhere, from Xanadu. Wright currently writes criticism for American Book Review and ArtNexus. He also produces his own art and poetry showcase called Live Mag!.

The covers for “Incantations,” The Operating System’s 5th Annual Chapbook Series, were designed by Lynne DeSilva-Johnson [Elæ Moss] using original drawings by artist Barbara Byers, from her long running “Asemic Series.”

Elæ Moss is a multimodal artist-researcher, curator, designer, and educator. Seeking Speculative Solidarities, they employ analog and digital media to investigate human, institutional and ecological systems and to iterate open source strategies for ecological and social change. Recent projects have shown at La Mama Galleria, EFA Project Space, STWST/Ars Electronica, Usdan Gallery, Judson Church, the Segal Center, SOHO20, Dixon Place, and the Exponential Festival, among others. Select publications include Big Echo, Tagvverk, Vestiges, Matters of Feminist Practice, The Transgender Narratives Anthology, Choice Words: Writers on Abortion, The Brooklyn Poets Anthology, and Resist Much, Obey Little: Inaugural Poems to the Resistance. Books include Ground, Blood Altas, Overview Effect, Sweet and Low: Indefinite Singular, Bodies of Work, and The Precarity Bodyhacking Work-Book and Guide. Moss is a Professor at Pratt Institute, and the developer / founder of the Operating System + Liminal Lab. More at: https://onlywhatican.net and https://theoperatingsystem.org.