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Ah, it has been too long! Back again, and with St. Mark’s, which is funny, since I felt “back again” while reading at St. Mark’s. “Back” when I finished with grad school—1998—I came to New York City. I would go to St. Mark’s for readings at least once a week, often more. I loved it there “back” then and ended up editing their Newsletter for a year—1999-2000. It was pretty thankless work, I have to admit—the community “back” then was, in retrospect, circling the aesthetic wagons. The academic ascendance of the LANGUAGE poets, the rise of Fence Magazine and its “hybrid” approach, and the continued professionalization of poetry served to threaten the long-standing identity of St. Mark’s as a “Beat,” non-academic, and countercultural institution (even the word “institution” constitutes a betrayal when writing of St. Mark’s); it was contentious then.
I have to admit the reading was bittersweet. I hadn’t read at St. Mark’s for over ten years, and it made me a little sad to be there. Time had passed, etc. Not just Katy in her 20s then and in her 30s now, but Clinton then and Obama now (with you-know-who acting as a literal interregnum)… It had been a long enough time that, even though I am positive I read with Mitch Highfill in the 90’s or introduced him somewhere… (?) at Segue (?), I couldn’t recall…
That said, his reading was fantastic. He was accompanied by a woman who played the musical saw, and she provided a great soundtrack to his wonderfully bizarre (and I guess FLARF-based?) series of poems about moths (both literal and figurative). It was spooky, funny, creepy, deep, entertaining, depressing, literally pathetic… the moths and the girl with a saw. Here is Stacy, who introduced:
Mitch:
I forgot to take pictures during the reading (and cannot believe I neglected to take one of the girl with the saw), but managed to take a few of audience members afterward:
Anne Tardos:
Christine Lee and Josh Drimmer:
Anselm Berrigan:
Jim Behrle:
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