the ten greatest books of 2019

greatest books of the year 2019

john wieners - selected poems

john wieners - cultural affairs in boston

the lives of the poems, three talks - joshua beckman

since when - bill berkson

a year from today - stacy szymaszek

a perfect vaccuum - ed. judah rubin

knowing knott: essays on an american poet - ed. steven huff

paul blackburn - journals

lucille clifton - poems

june jordan - new and selected

angela davis - essays and talks

michelle tea - poems

barry lyndon - stanley kubrick

richard savage - samuel johnson

total eclipse - dicaprio as rimbaud (the walking scenes mostly)

boswell’s life of johnson

negativity’s kiss - alice notley

langston hughes - selected

charles reznikoff - collected

joanne kyger - as ever

joel oppenheimer - at fifty

joel oppenheimer - open spaces

biotherm - frank o’hara

kevin killian - fascination

kevin killian - poet be like god (jack spicer bio)

paul blackburn - collected

paul blackburn - on in or about the premises

jack kerouac: a biography - tom clark

kb nemcosky - early exits

evening at the talk house - wallace shawn

a certain slant of sunlight - ted berrigan

full moon of paris - eric rohmer

satori in paris - jack kerouac

james baldwin - essay on getting arrested in paris

michael mcclure - jaguar skies

bob kaufman - cranial guitar

james laughlin - byways

san francisco poets - ed dave meltzer 

san francisco beat - ed dave meltzer

michael c ford & sw griffin at beyond baroque

gregory corso - poems

outlaw bible of american poetry - eds alan kaufman & sw griffin

reflections of my life as a woman - diane diprima

cedar sigo lecture on revolutionary poetry at cuny grad center

larry eigner - readiness/ enough/ depends/ on

gary snyder - poems

kenneth rexroth - classics revisited

kenneth rexroth - essays 

kenneth rexroth - the dragon and the unicorn

kenneth rexroth - poems

grand piano - rae armentrout, kit robinson, et al

mexico city blues - jack kerouac

david henderson - de mayor of harlem

songs of innocence, songs of experience album set by Allen Ginsberg

david henderson - neo-california

don’t touch the poet: the life and times of joel oppenheimer - lyman gilmore

straight around allen - bob rosenthal

michael mcclure - rare angel

robert lax - the hermit’s guide to home economics

lewis warsh - information from the surface of venus

bernadette mayer & lewis warsh - piece of cake

elio schneeman - along the rails

rommel drives deep into egypt - richard brautigan

the basketball diaries - jim carroll

forced entries: the downtown diaries 1971-1973 - jim carroll

bernadette mayer - the old style, poetry

The ten greatest books of 2018

The estrangement principle – ariel Goldberg

Republics of reality – Charles Bernstein

Notes from irrelevance, something for everybody, primitive state – anselm Berrigan

We’ll all go together – Edmund Berrigan

Clearview/lie – ted greenwald

Immediate surround – lewis warsh

Mysteries of small houses, disobedience – alice notley
Bob Rosenthal – cleaning up new york

Greg fuchs – came like it went

Jim brodey – heart of the breath

Gus van sant – last days, my own private Idaho

Wayne koestenbaum – my 1980s
Tom clark - the poetry beat

Dorothy wordsworth Grasmere journals

Fred moten – the service porch

Renaldo and clara – bob Dylan

City eclogue – ed Roberson

Evolution – Eileen myles

Smithereens - susan seidelman

Space is the place – sun ra

Junk – tommy pico
Old angel midnight - Jack kerouac 

The city real and imagined – ca Conrad + frank Sherlock

New York: a documentary film (up till last episode)

On the bowery

Lorenzo Thomas – the bathers

Dave Meltzer – arrows
Bernadette Mayer - poetry state forest 

Walter Benjamin on Baudelaire, paris + the flaneur

The comedian as the letter ‘c’ – Wallace stevens

Lew welch – the hermit poems

Ed sanders – the poetry and life of allen Ginsberg

a personal bibliography

-->

dollhouse refuse, stone in the brook, gunky canal,

antoine doinel, first person narrative, live at the bbc,

mcchicken sandwich, junior bacon cheeseburger, 5 piece nugget,

grandpa’s pipes, necktwitch, headbob, mary-kate and ashley it takes two,

pardon the interruption, around the horn, the wreck of the edmund fitzgerald,

empty late night bus stop, alan alda autographed 8x10 glossy, golf hazard,

batting cage, arizona iced tea can flattened by railroad tracks,

mallard, liquid cloud, marsville, safety town, 444-4444,

tom waits bootlegs horn section skipping stone, alex katz, prayer bead,

dudefest 98, savory crepe, nafta, kisses on oscar wilde’s grave,

shock doctrine, macintosh performa, gerbil with a broken back,

big bear warehouse heist, glenn beck’s poe in the backcountry,

duck tape, birdhouse decks, raisin bran crunch, path through wetlands,

these are the things ever I’ve seen these are the things ever I’ve known

only a pawn in their game

the things I’ve done for cheap ny apartment

bourgeois computer dad forcing me to befriend the daughter

the daughter running to arkansas looking for diamonds in shit

it’s recently constitutional to own fellow man

in mellow way           mom said they’d been good to me

I didn’t know what she was talking about but took her word for it

the violations were emotional

this is a gentle kind of subjugation I thought the best that I can get

the upkeep of water is permanent

the bourgeois buy me with their empty rooms

I am fighting them in every way

from the turret of their own house

I am fighting them with my dreams                       the question remains

my soul           do I get to keep it?

challenger

I live back in the air someone riding an explosion

up through blue clouds and sky

and back down again

in the space shuttle of the mansion which was really just gallons of fuel

            I live back

in the air riding an explanation that never relents

and never fails and never sums

                                                a global market awake across all time zones

           

film crews essentially piece me together

I ran a pirate ship a few years        too bad it exploded  leaving me here

back in the air                                                                       riding an {{{explosion}}}