ANOTHER MAGICAL NIGHT (FOR ME)

So, the reading last night was an amazingly gratifying event for me. Hearing Douglas Crase read some of my favorite works of his (and without looking down at the books he was reading from for great lengths of time, having memorized lines so complicatedly brilliant and subtly intense I can't imagine anyone being able to say them without double checking the page)...

And then hearing Elinor Nauen (if you don't know her writing you should, she is one of my all-time favorites, as well as a favorite longtime friend) introduce me with such insightful and poetic terminology, ending with these words:

"Here is a man, a poet, doing what a poet ought to be doing: looking at the world with all his attention. Lally carries the bits and pieces of everything he has paid attention to—which is more than almost any poet I can think of—and turns that attentiveness into poetry. Here’s a chance to hear what he’s found out."

...and then to read to a room full of love and appreciation, I couldn't be more grateful, a delight despite my ongoing back pain that I was able to ignore for most of the evening...and it is better today and I know from experience will continue to improve...thanks to all the old and new friends who come out for the event. Here's some photos taken by my longtime friend Eve Brandstein:

old friend the poet and actor Michael O'Keefe and me

me and poet/writer Ben Brandstein 

singer/songwriter Dina Regine

me and Eve and the book (my tee shirt is a reproduction of the point in the Lincoln or Holland Tunnel that indicates when you've crossed over from Jersey to New York, or vice versa)