John Godfrey – “…I want to wish you a new year which
doesn't exist yet.” “Ink spots for Larry Fagan” (seems to be about tattoos)
Susan Landers - space a poem about a Hollywood actress who
bought a mansion in Brooklyn (Michelle Williams) [very sharp and funny!]
Cliff Fyman - “Williamsburg Bridge graffiti” (seems
to be a list of things found scratched on the paint, reminding one of nothing
so much as old hobo phrases)
Aracelis Girmay - (much ado about reaching the same
conclusions as Dr. Manhattan did in “The Watchmen” comic book) ostensibly about
science, because of the reference to Dr. Neil Degrasse Tyson
Sarah Schulman - from the novel “New York City 1958”,
Sweet dreams of the old meatpacking district
The Double Yews - music (rubber knife percussion, “a new/old
song, out of Susie Timmins and then by Frank O'Hara…” [Actually reminds me a little bit of Foamola]
Carley Moore - A poem for the “future perfect”… Uses the
refrain of “my future ex-husband and I_____”, and then “my future
ex-wife_____”, just to add a little gender confusion I guess…
Wanda Phipps - inspired by the Spike Lee movie “her”
Vyt Bakaitis - wishes for a “happier future for a
shellshocked planet” (appears to be about Paris) “no need to burn the past/it
does its own damage control”
Farnoosh Fathi - offers thanks to Hannah, who helped with
the poem… Phrases, disjointed,… “Overhead of fever leaps like a pawn” [no
accounting for homonyms here]
Montana Ray - lengthy description of reconstituting some
archive of personal materials reprocessed into hand-crafted paper, I suppose,
and offers a group participation bit where she passes out these processed paper
postcard products with the question on one side “do you like me?” and on the
other side the words yes and no, which said cards are to be returned to her
sometime during the evening at the audiences leisure… [Which I do, both: like
her and return the card]
Simone White - (director of the poetry project) “a death
poem” (about her father)
Kimberly Lyons – “for Noel cold cut(?): Noctilucent” (?)
Bob Rosenthal - (St. Mark's poetry Project chili maker
since 1974) “from his poetry book ‘Cleaning up New York’”… Three short ones:
“evening wind”, “sentient coming” and “10 things I could get used to”
Karen Lepri - “new food”… “The transformation of an
object in a poem is how we step outside of time”
Ramsey Scott - “… Cop hand to ear my friends…”
Sade Murphy - (this person's first new years in New York
City) “I get so sad at what's new…”
Julia Alsop - (a poet working in radio) [reads from
phone] “outside the diner, Alvin lights up and says I love you…” (Seems to be
about nostalgia for new year, and smoking…[but who isn't?])
Amy King - (one of the eco-poets, whatever that is)
new poem “drive-by” [it’s not what you're thinking] and “a sexy sci-fi”…
“Destiny is a search for imagination…”, “Speech is the something we frame our
other outlines with… (?)”, And a poem entitled “the wind is a wandering moon”
(from a theme found in the movie “Predator”)
Jaamil Olawale Kosoko - (originally from Detroit) “placed
between loss and living, for my brother” and “enemy”… “I don't even recognize
the living without battle wounds…”
Andrew Durbin - From “blonde summer” (at airport,
overwhelmed by Taylor Swift, and more) [interesting observations about poetry
and the Internet]
Martha Wilson - sings a song by Barbara Kruger from 1978,
when she was in the all girl group Called Disband, reminding one of nothing so
much as a new version of the fugs’ Tuli Kupferberg's infamous song “nothing”
Joanna Fuhrman - (some sort of reinvention of Frank O'Hara's
“kerosene”, a critique of modern media communications) “I'm in love with this
century for being so complicated, but I still have to weep…”
Karen Weiser - this is her 18th marathon attendance: “oh,
not here” and a poem for Frida Kahlo… closes with “I miss you Bill.”
Shiv Kotecha - (off phone) “I made you” (seems to be about
dogs, or at least a dog)
Andriniki Mattis -
“how to look between the lines”: “…isn't this what reading is for?”
Betsy Fagin - “neglected ancestors singing songs only
ghosts can understand”
Marie Buck - “the public system tree (?)”: “I know
how to make a dog look like it's talking - put peanut butter in its mouth”
[good tip!]
Jace Clayton - big grouping of people see video
Denize Lauture - makes note of “mass shootings (in
America, I think the number is 43) from 1984 to now, and asks the question
“where are the poets of our land?” ['s spellbinder!]
Martha Oatis - “uncovered” [comes to mic still wearing her
down coat, with a shoulder bag reading “if you read something say something”]
Christian Hawkey - Poem by Lorenzo Thomas “19 93 _”
Ben Krusling - (from Cincinnati) “man is not a beast” and
“the first age of decay”… “How the mind turns around and only sees redacted
scenes of history”
Christopher Stackhouse “company” (appears to be all about
a block of text?) And “soft as a melting crayon”, and “snow fountain”
[extremely pointillist]
Uljana Wolf - in German first, then English, with
the title that sounds like a structural linguists dissertation, appears to be
like something about the blur of meaning in age of mechanical reproduction…
[with no apologies to Walter Benjamin]
Wendy Xu - “Sunday”… “It takes a tree's patients…
That year I got drunk”
Marcella Durand - “the world is comprised of various
contiguous objects that… [Was going so fast I couldn't get the whole bit down,
but I understand the point of that line, i.e.: that there's some things that
just can't be broken down into component parts, and though nobody mentions
Georg Cantor and infinity that's what they're talking about] the title of which
might be “geologic history of Versailles”
Ed Askew Band - music “from a love affair I had around
1970…”: “Crazy angels”: “it's just water under a bridge/at cat's cradle/and
passing ships”… “All the crazy angels you gave me”
Philip Glass - Philip glass
CA Conrad - “(In re: most recent birthday) I
remember Taylor Mead said to me, when you reach 50 then we can talk about
aging”… “Pull him as a storm, not as refuge”… “Life is about choices is what
ass holes with the best choices say” [this one really brought the house down]
Lisa Jarnot - an open plea to poets to start the
eco-revolution now (“Angry Poem”)… “Not just theoretically”
Evie Shockley - starts by saying “2015 didn't end well for
me” and you can see why Interpol am “Supply and Demand”, using a variation on
what her father's maximums for frugality feel like when you substitute the term
“black boys” for other forms of currency and natural resources
Stephen Boyer - most flamboyant dresser to date, and reads
Janet Jackson lyrics, because “that's where I'm at right now”
Todd Colby - Todd
Dan Machlin and Serena Jost- cello and guitar, sounds kind
of like the Incredible String Band
Adjua Gargi Nzinga Greaves- calls heself an experimental
artist… “We'd tease the inevitable…”, “When you corrected me, I asked, what are
you fighting to defend”, “the mission is to create the first draft of a thing,
for others to later revise”, “the mission is to perform the first draft and
charge admission” [big hit of the night!]
Saretta Morgan - (seems to be reading datebook entries for
December off the phone)
Steven Taylor - try to sing off the cell phone, with
respect to Ginsberg: try to make a catalog of sensuous impressions, and in this
case a church graveyard
Tom Savage - “written on my skin, in memory of
Bill” (Notes newly discovered text fragments of the Greek writer Sappho) “I
wonder what a night with Rabelais's was like?” (reference Bill)
Don Yorty – [first poem notes indecipherable] and
sonnet 56 “love like rain”: “love comes in and comes/lust is one and done”
Emily XYZ - Emily XYZ
Maggie Dubris - “I think we can all be glad you're not on
the road to sainthood” (re:: mother Theresa and the effects and affects of
same)
Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib - (this seems to be about an
extension of the Black Lives Matter movement) “I imagine anything we own is
borrowed”
Jennifer Bartlett - “the future and past ones” (referring
to her placement among the “others” of significant or insignificant others in a
person's life) “you Google porn cerebral palsy because you want to see someone
like you having an orgasm…”
Steve Cannon - …”1966 the Metropole”(?) “No small matter”
Morgan Parker - “Magical Negirl Number”(?)
Church of Betty – Church of Betty “paella”
Janet Hamill - Janet Hamill, this is a
collaboration with John from art crime “I'm addicted to coffee” refrain, lots
of references to “Einstein on the Beach” such as “solfreggios of glass”
(probably referencing both Philip and the actual way is overlapping, breathless
arpeggios seem to echo the poetry term)
Yvonne Meier - improvisation with dancers
Jibade-Khalil Huffman - sounds like app agreement then, a
ref to ghetto crime novelist Donald Goines (can't really follow it after that)
“the only people that care about Kwanzaa are McDonald's”
Lewis Warsh - “stigmata”-bedbugs, Gregor Samsa,”…something
about “wild beasts and poisonous insects…” “It's time to leave the party but I
can't find my coat”
Eleni Sikelianos - “they sought to erase from my face all
evidence that I had lived” (with cello) “I'm taking man back for woman,
mankind” [is that a threat, or promise?]
Nada Gordon - “a little tune about poetry in fighting”
Nurit Tilles - Scott Joplin's “Maple leaf rag”
Dawn Lundy Martin - “our wondering” (off phone)
Joey de Jesus - “an insect poetic” and “catalog” (“this is
like the homosexual agenda”)
David Henderson - “citizen Saundra Bland”, also referring
to Eric Garner
Heroes are Gang Leaders – “YOUR BOOK SUCKS!
Patricia Spears Jones - “my book didn't suck…” And “the
face of ferocity That”: “there are no perfect storms” (re: 2016 getting ugly)
Christine Elmo - dance: semaphore is as semantic as
something to remember [too fast probably wrong]
Wo Chan - “permanent alien”, really fun and spacey,
with a chant of “resistance is fertile/resistance is fertile/resistance is
fertile/hail Hydra” is a pop cultural closer
Felix Bernstein – [no connection whatsoever]
Jennifer Blowdryer - “standing on Avenue a with crazy Jay
from Avenue a…” Very sassy
Foamola - foamola
Joseph Keckler - Joseph Kegler
Yoshiko Chuma - Yoshiko Juma
John S. Hall - John S Hall
John Giorno- John G Arno
Penny Arcade 80
- Penny arcade
Ernie Brooks with Peter Zummo and Jeannine Otis 81 -
Ernie Brooks ensemble doing another Arthur Russell composition
Jenny Zhang - “I think you might be gay” (like a a Valley
Girl porno phone sex worker with a kinky sense of humor)
Purvi Shah - re: Texas and birth certificates,
“when we mark documents by a series of erasures how can we trust them?”, Also
refers to Dred Scott, and the 3/5 of a person statute, etc.
Anne Waldman and Fast Speaking Music 84 -
Annie Waldman
Pamela Sneed - “I don't want to write a great poem about
Seikou Sundiata”
Steve Earle 86 -
Steve Earle
Thurston Moore 87
- Thurston Moore
Jonas Mekas 88
- Jonas Nika's
Reno 89 -
Reno, Trojan war rap
Edwin Torres with David Brown 90 - Edwin Torres, groovy
Latin rapine to conga
Eileen Myles - her expression to the audience of
being extremely happy that 2015 ended so well for her because “I think I got to
fuck everybody” (more than likely she meant sexually, if the grin on her face
meant anything) …and her poem was even shorter
Erica Hunt and Marty Ehrlich 93 - Hunt and Ehrlich
Anselm Benigan - “This One Time (for someone else… ‘and D.
Boon’ [which is probably not the American folk hero and likely the deceased
leader of seminal hardcore outfit, The Minutemen])” [turns the page a lot
leading to the suspicion that this poem was written circularly around the page
perhaps in a spiral, but who knows?]
Lonely Christopher - “All Good Years”
Tonya Foster - “May this day and each day hereafter carry
some joy, despite_____” and “to shake Or Be Shut down”
Morgan Bassichis - “I don't do resolutions historically. I
don't like to pursue disappointment.” This one sounds more like a comedy
routine about daily terrors, with the refrain “I'm the door you forgot”
Ryan Sawyer - very funky drummer plays a song
“You’re dead and Out Of This World”, which I first recall hearing on the record
album by Norma Tanega, with the hit song as “Walking with My Cat Named Dog”
Rijard Bergeron - “weeknights”
Tracie Morris with Jerome Harris and Marvin Sewell - “Wade
in the Water”
Valery Oisteanu - “The Immortal Anarchist (for Judith
Molina)”
Stephanie Gray - “what we heard”
Trace Peterson - a self-described “transwoman” does poem
for Jennifer Bartlett entitled “everyone is a little_____”
Lee Ann Brown - she has been doing some work with ballads
down south and sings one collected over 100 years ago entitled “The Cherry Tree
Carol” and get the audience to sing along on the repeated chorus, if
diffidently
Mitch Highfill - this is an uncompleted poem
written for this day entitled “Living for the Island of Misfit Toys”
Diana Hamilton - “God was right, we were wrong” (about
cats, it appears)
Aldrin Valdez – about Philippine restaurant called
“Jeepy”? At any rate a paen to same
Brenda Lijima - described in her own introduction as “a
fully fledged animal” it should come as no surprise that her greeting from the
lectern was “Good Evening, Great Apes”
Edgar J. Ulloa - someone and Sebastian something? - - Sure
looks like his son though, if not a nephew: cute little boy banging away at
abstract arpeggios on the electric piano, as he does a memory of Mexico City
Danniel Schoonebeek - “The Likes of You” appears to be him
versus society and, of some significance, the West Bank of the Delaware River
Christina Strong - “The Invisible Hand” (re: Adam Smith as
conservative archetype, for the central mystery of laissez-faire capitalism at
the core of everything wrong with the world - more or less)
Emily Skillings - “Champion Flowers” (dedicated to Jane
Froehlich?)
Edmund Berrigan - sings Emily Dickinson sent to ukulele,
very peppy for the Amherst laureate
Ariel Goldberg - “your edges have to be very good, like a
certificate hanging on a doctor's office wall”
