All Is For Naughts

Or, "Catching up with the Zeros..."

Yes, it has been much ballyhoo'ed about as to the disunity in nomeclature with respect to the decade past. I will go with the above simply out of the way it reminds me of Jethro Clampett trying to count, but, as well, a short piece by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. found here

And so, as 2009 drew to a close, as is my wont I went to the St. Marks Poetry Project Marathon on New Year's Day. The major change this year was the dedication of the event to the passing of Jim Carroll. As there is a previous post here upon that gent, I will not wax prolix again.

The standard disclaimer still applies to all the Hash Marks.

This is not a review anymore than anyone can scribble anything on over 100 performances of various stages of abstraction and concrete references and still maintain some kind of appreciation for each and all. This is simply the list transcribed in the order of appearance with the raw notes of solid impressions and a few asides. If anyone happens to stumble across this and feels slighted, don't be. You were part of a day I always treasure if only for the fact that it gives us all a way of celebrating the passage of time without referring to the previous eve's false sense of overwhelming jollity and gay abandon, usually associated with Re-Marks like, "Whew! I shouldn't oughtta ___ like that!" (Fill in your debauch of choice.) Such it is that the Question Marks after some entries represent whether or not I heard right what was coming off the stage (acoustics, and the natural ambiguity of poets' word choice and/or their level of articulation). The Quotation Marks enclose possible titles or sharp details that sprang out of the mix.

And everything else is just...St. Marks.

1. David Shapiro -- "forget..."
2. Cliff Fyman – bad waiter
3. Phyllis Wat - platonic solids
4. Richard O’Russa
5. Marcella Durand,
6. Michael Lydon – the handsomest man in the world sings another warm and friendly well-nigh children's song
7. Michael Cirelli - re: muslim/or non-WASP wife endiring airplane security checks, “she doesn’t hide the bomb/she is the bomb”
8. Joe Elliot – advertisements for the new world (sorta zen slices form the image factory)
9. Pierre Joris
10. Joel Lewis
11. Dael Orlandersmith – on a personal encounter w/a famous celebrity on a cellphone walking across the middle of 6th avenue
12. Nicole Peyrafitte & Miles Joris-Peyrafitte
3PM
13. Brendan Lorber – advice for the be chic?
14. Tony Hoffman – Intertidal Zone?
15. CA Conrad
16. David Mills – “if it has a face/don’t eat it” and a list poem (lobotomy is? or a body is?)
17. Tracey McTeague– What Shelley began, Redd Foxx finished… ‘Look out, Elizabeth, I’m comin’ to you!’” [consort/wife of Lorber, is stone sex fox in leather and choker and heels, even w/baby]
18. Denizé Lauture,
19. Lisa Jarnot
20. Magdalena Zurawski – lesbian w/real vocab for sex (why is it that they seem to do the eros thang so much better than the porno thang?)
21. Tyler Burba – "last night I had a strange dream, sitting with a group of children and we were all singing this song about death..."
22. Gary Parrish – ex-vet: “two days to go/I might be standing here/for years”
23. Elinor Nauen
24. Mónica de la Torre – (on job applications, overhead? over-heard?) “My English is no…”
25. Steve Cannon – gal (protege?) reads poem ending "hope is where our heart lives" and he chords piano like a goofy Monk, to end on "No Small Matter"
26. Tim Griffin – (has apparently put on a similar marathon with the Serpentine Gallery in London) “What are the new topics?”
27. Will Morris – a/k/a Billy Cancel (options titles = “or” repeated w/innumerable funnies, such as "an ode to my father or the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is or citigroup building 51st floor...")
28. Renato Rosaldo – Sam Spade and Effie Perrine discuss case in shooting script terminology
4PM
29. Church Of Betty – a song from Araby
30. Nada Gordon & Gary Sullivan – “a poem is true if…” [sorta XYZ and Meyers, w/o rhythm]
31. Diana Hamilton – “describe…”
32. Eddie Hopely – a list of first names of the 15 largest company’s CEO’s (a large number of which are women)
33. Mina Pam Dick – “let us mourn Mona Lisa’s eyebrows…”
34. Susan Landers – poem based on the Chicago Manual of Style
35. Bob Rosenthal
36. Don Yorty (& nephew on 2nd guitar) do blues songs: “Goin’ Back to Work Again” w/line “Sisyphus did fine/pushin’ one rock at a time”, and “White Trash Baby”
37. John Godfrey
38. Rebecca Moore - "is now working part time at an upstate farm animal rescue shelter..." and still clocks in as downtown's own version of Tori Amos, or better
39. Donna Brook – driving instructions on Health Care (like "people who drive on the political left must learn important rules of the road...to reach your destination it is most important to do so without injury to self, passengers or vehicle...there will be wrong turns, false starts, and dead ends...but always keep your hands on the steering wheel")
40. Kim Lyons – from “Secret Sharer”?
5PM
41. Michael Brownstein – plastic bottle squeezing to demonstrate the enemy ("20% of these end up in landfills"), conscience on full blast, projects us into Soylent Green world…
42. Philip Glass – a new one! (that is, new to me...)
[who was the guy in the Nudie-type suit of cacti, teepees and campfires patches reading “WAGON MASTER” in sequins?]
43. Peter Bushyeager – thinks of the Stones’ “No Expectations” and speaks on the contrast between blogging and the countryside extremes
44. Robert Hershon [great presence in the room]
45. Greg Fuchs – “so excellent to sit in this room, quiet, and listen to one another”
46. Karen Weiser – “Suppose you surrender ‘til we hum about you”
[I want tech support on my life!]
47. Paolo Javier
48. Joanna Fuhrman – “I hid the 20th century in my Marcel Duchamp lunchbox” (w/a Rrose Selavy ref. too)
49. Yuko Otomo
50. Steve Dalachinsky – “I was shanghai’ed years ago/by my book” (ending w/”Thank god/He gave us God” almost orthodox jew in citation)
51. David Freeman
52. Tom Savage – for Merce Cunningham, and a Ned Rorem song to a Whitman text
53. Ari Banias (amazing baul out?) “Love takes its Sharpie and draws a mustache on everything” (& a disco ball moved by 2 guys on street: stunning image of the nightlife icon in the real world…)
6PM
54. Kristin Prevallet – OLD STYLE! w/bongos!
55. Judith Malina and Red Noir Ensemble – reading of classic Julian Beck rabble-rousing rhetoric, followed by semi-STOMP and group grope! (boy, they don't make them like this anymore...)
56. David Kirschenbaum – “Dorothy Hamill, Farah Fawcett, Shawn Cassidy” in song tribute to hair!
57. Sharon Mesmer – “A few things I’d like to see in the next year…” (She gets better every time I see her...)
7PM???
58. Jon S. Hall – a) Christmas trees rolling down the street like tumbleweeds” from accompaniest, then, b) “EVERYTHING’S CLOSED!” poem w/ultracute baby daughter
59. Avram Fefer – sax solo
60. Adeena Karasick
61. Eugene Ostashevsky – “The Parrot & The Pirate”, quotes Descarte, and olde saw about two frogs in buttermilk: one drowns and the other kicks up such a fuss it becomes yoghurt and makes an escape, then Gilligan’s Isle!
62. Toby Goodshank (from Moldy Peaches)
63. Geoffrey Cruickshank-Hagenbuckle
64. Maggie Estep - new novel about pirates? ("She was tall for a girl, not ugly for her time, and someone had stolen her dog...")
65. Patricia Spears Jones
66. Dan Machlin & Serena Jost
67. Murat Nemat-Nejat – “The structure of Replicants”(?) and, “I’m a parakeet/twit-wit-twit-wit/Good Morning!” language lesson record thang that actually got the stoic crowd to do repeats!
68. Gillian McCain – comes up w/Lester to play tapes of Jim Carroll talking about the day Kennedy was shot finding him on toilet masturbating to pix of Streisand in bikini, and 2 more, then Lester gets audience to sing one chorus of Happy Birthday to her and gives her a Snuggie as present
69. Steve Earle – “Peace”
70. Maggie Dubris
71. Edwin Torres – “Grunt” (yup! All about scatological functions...)
72. Steven Taylor
73. Ed Friedman
74. Bill Kushner & Merle Lister [2nd year w/Chihuahua bit]
75. Janet Hamill – song paean to “Metropolitan Avenue”, in two parts
8PM
76. Foamola – just as much fun and chaos, but w/repeat of “I Like Heroin” song
77. Todd Colby – “Thanks for 2009 - it sucked!”
78. Tony Towle - toasts
79. Christine Elmo - dancer
80. John Giorno - dusts off one from 1993
81. Laura Elrick
82. LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs [in Hawaiian and Cherokee]
83. Charles Bernstein – “Not for all the whiskey in heaven…”
84. Rodrigo Toscano’s Collapsible Poetics Theater – extended enigmas with members in the audience chairs adding oddities, best of which is guy who keeps interrupting to hang either quotation marks or Nixon peace signs over the proceedings
[there is no expiration date on______]
[note: Jim Carroll memorial, Feb. 10]
85. Elliott Sharp
86. Penny Arcade – “I took it on myself…” for 2nd year
87. Lenny Kaye
88. Legs McNeil – from intro to his Ramones book
89. Anne Tardos – anti-war
90. Tonya Foster – (uses of the term ‘bitch’ and ‘b-ball’)
91. Miguel Gutierrez – dances along to, then sings/screams a Radiohead song, blonde wig goes flying in paroxysm
92. Lewis Warsh - imagines a conga line and sexual metaphors, long and complex
93. Eileen Myles
94. Bruce Andrews & Sally Silvers – utilizes a white-trash ethnic soundscape of semi-comprehensible morphemes and syllables while she dances
95. Jonas Mekas – “KEEP ON SNOWING! …JUST LIKE RUSSIA IN 1812!”
96. Reuben Butchart – very nice song set to poetry of John Carroll, not Jim
97. Taylor Mead - (for a change, his portable Mingus tape works okay)
98. Patti Smith - beaming: "I actually feel pretty good about the year to come..."
99. Oliver Ray - real nice, long song
100. Anselm Berrigan
101. Yoshiko Chuma – starts w/music for a change, actual medley of Bernard Herrmann themes!
102. Callers – nice music set
103. Joan Larkin
104. Tracie Morris
105. Simon Pettet
106. John Kelly – terrific song
107. Peter Zummo Group (with Ernie Brooks and Bill Ruyle) – fascinating work taken from Newton’s book attempting to track a comet around the Earth to prove theory of gravity but feels like you're following with your astrolabe in hand and tripping through the solar system
109. Jim Neu – dedicated to Bill Rice and another guy…
111. Roy Nathanson and bassist – great jazz workout