Attending the People's Poetry Gathering, I developed an image in my mind of this great angel oak, alive with singing birds.
–
Carol Conroy 
The first People's Poetry Gathering was unqualified success.
Over 5,500 people gathered for the three days of readings, conversations
and performances. Together with Poets House, our institutional partner,
we gathered together literary poets with young inner city poets, often
for the first time; we gathered practitioners of venerable oral traditions
with the most renowned contemporary poets; we gathered together more than
50 teachers and l,000 students for a special student day on April 9; we
gathered under one roof the two disciplines of literature and folklore;
and in gathering we validated and inspired all the poets and poetries.
As one person put, it was a Gathering of Gatherings, bringing together
elements as diverse as the Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, Nevada and
the off-beat Gathering of Tribes on 3rd Street between Avenues C and D
in the Lower East Side of Manhattan.
The 1999 Poetry Gathering Brochure
Comments from Gathering attendees...
Some of the comments of visitors suggest the way in which the Gathering reached new audiences and altered perceptions of poetry.
Sylvia Cole, 83 year old participant: "The most important thing I learned: Poetry is alive and well! The People's Poetry Gathering with its emphasis on the oral tradition made me realize that I had been looking for poetry in the wrong places. The poetry I heard at the Gathering had immense vigor and freshness and immediacy."
Middle School student from The Salk School of Science: "The Gathering made me realize that poetry was many different things, not just some words on a piece of paper."
Robert Bly: "I think the event was a great success....All these lunatic poets were able to get a scent of each others' heart or feet, and that's a lovely thing."
Peggy Dye, visitor : "Coming to the blues session with John Cephas and the other bluesicians, brought me back to my uncles and to my father and the way people in my family told stories on the front porch in Evanston, Illinois, in the 50s. I felt suddenly visible in a new way. My uncle James with his white straw hat like John Cephas, and the plaid band around it, my uncle with his pecan-colored face and flowered shirt and flat Mississippi drawl—my uncle from the country was suddenly part of culture—of the 'governing culture' talking in New York City. I am a Vassar graduate and learned in Vassar to read William Blake. We did not read the blues at Vassar College. Now, after City Lore's Poets Gathering, I want to bring my uncle's words and rhymes to Blake and beyond—even to Goethe. My uncle could have traded quite some talk off the front porch with Goethe."
Eve Reed, visitor,
from a poem sent to us entitled THE PEOPLE'S POETRY Gathering:
...My head still echoes from the variety of languages. Tongues I only
hear as sound Orators Priests How Else How Else...