At first it was pretty standard fare: She posed, framed by feathers, as a glittering pop princess through a pristine, apparently lip-synced “Auld Lang Syne.”

The Seattle poet and educator, a Hugo House fellow, reads from his debut full-length poetry collection, “This Glittering Republic.”

Of these, none was more painful to behold than the glittering and towering tree in Milan, which was sponsored by Pandora, a Copenhagen-based jeweller.