Jeffrey Cyphers Wright

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Jeffrey Cyphers Wright (born in 1951) is a New Romantic poet associated with St. Mark's Poetry Project. He is considered to belong to the "New York School third generation" according to The Brooklyn Rail in a review of "Captured, A Film and Video History of the Lower East Side" published by Seven Stories Press.^{[citation needed]} Known as a poet, he is also a publisher, critic and eco-activist in New York City.

Upon arriving in New York in 1976, Wright studied with Ted Berrigan and Alice Notley at St. Mark’s Church. He also studied with Allen Ginsberg at Brooklyn College and received an MFA in poetry. He started Hard Press in 1978 and published 100 postcards by different artists and poets and three books, including the anthology 3-Zero, Turning Thirty. A selection of postcards were included in "A Secret History of the Lower East Side," and were displayed at New York Public Library. From 1986 until 2001 he published 80 issues of Cover Magazine, The Underground National. Wright currently edits Live Mag! and hosts poetry events at Mo Pitkin's and La Mama Etc.

Wright is the author of Employment of the Apes, All in All, Drowing Light and other books of poetry, most recently The Name Poems from Sisyphus Press. Wright's poems also appear in six anthologies including Out of This World from Crown Press and Thus Spake the Corpse from Black Sparrow Press. Poetry and art criticism has appeared in ARTnews, Art and Antiques and The Brooklyn Rail among others. Wright is currently the art critic for Chelsea Now.

Wright lives in the East Village in New York City where he is also an impresario and MC who has hosted scores of poetry readings and performances at various venues, from Tompkins Square Library to cafes and clubs, galleries and community gardens. He has also taught poetry and writing for Teachers & Writers Collaborative, Brooklyn College, The Poetry Project and many other places. His oral histories from Harlem, Over the Years, was published by Teachers and Writers and went into a second printing.

[edit] Criticism

Upon publishing Wright’s long poem “Touch Base” in Exquisite Corpse, editor Andrei Codrescu described the work as a “tour de force.”^{[citation needed]}

Reviewing Employment of the Apes, Dennis Cooper wrote, "Wright’s talent appears bright… as well as attractive in the categories of feeling, inspiration and temperament. The affect is simultaneously intimate and imaginative."^{[citation needed]}

Hugh Seidman wrote about Flourish, "These ‘sonnets’ are a gas. Wright is never afraid to pull out the stops of artifice and go over the top.^{[citation needed]}