THE LATEST DEBATE: MY TAKE

Yang was steady as usual, no surprises or fireworks but no flubs either. Mayor Pete and Warren both took some body blows. The mayor scored on Warren who attacked him for big money donors and closed events for them, but when he countered with his claim that he was the only one in this debate who wasn't a "millionaire or billionaire" she suddenly seemed defenseless, as if she and her handlers weren't even prepared for such an obvious comeback. She didn't point out that she lived much of her life on the low end of the economic scale and was a self-made person who didn't come from anything near wealth while the mayor did, she just folded. And Pete, when he tried to dis Klobachar got pummeled by the winner of the debate, the female Senator from the midwest. Klobachar was quick and smart and sometimes funny but definitely the most together candidate in this debate. Biden had a "no harm no foul" night and Bernie was more vigorous than ever and as consistent as usual also but repetitive and reductive. Steyer was just in the wrong arena. I'll still vote for whoever the nominee is.

ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD

A shot of who happened to read their poetry one night at the weekly reading series me and Eve Brandstein ran in the 1980s and '90s at different clubs in Hollywood and environs, this time at Cafe Largo. Top row: Anne Beatts, Hubert Selby Jr. (R.I.P.), me, Jack Grapes, Eve, Lotus Weinstock (R.I.P.), Joel Lipman (R.I.P.), bottom row, Tommy Swerdlow, Katey Sagal, Yvonne de la Vega (R.I.P.), Michael O'Keefe, Robert Downey Jr., Michael Harris, Miriam Mezzierres, Michael des Barres, Caroline Ducrocq (photo by Nancy Rica Schiff). Some of the regulars not there that night include Ty Grandson Jones, Nana-ana Danquah, Lynn Manning (R.I.P.), Meriline M. Murphy (R.I.P.), Harry Dean Stanton (R.I.P.), Susan Hayden, and too many others to recall at this moment.

A MODEST PROPOSAL

The "pledge of allegiance" Nancy Pelosi referenced in her opening remarks today was an advertising gimmick from the late 1800s and didn't include the words "under god" until the cold war 1950s when you were a commie if you didn't constantly proclaim allegiance to "god"...the so-called founding fathers weren't about allegiance to a flag, or "god" but to the Constitution, so I've always felt if school children and senators and people at public functions want to display their patriotism, they should pledge allegiance to the Constitution.

Michael Lally (C) forever

YVONNE DE LA VEGA R.I.P.

I got the distressing and depressing news last night that one of my dearest and most intimate friends in my years "in L.A."—Yvonne de la Vega—has passed on. The last time I saw her was at the reading I did at Beyond Baroque a year ago. Here she is with her arm around me at the book singing afterward, and another dear friend from L.A., the equally unique performer and poet, Mello-Re Huston.

Yvonne was one of the most dynamic and essential presences in my almost twenty years in Southern California, and in the lives of everyone who knew her in her lifetime. Her life-affirming creativity and joyful presence, at least for me most of the time, despite her struggles, was inspirational. She never gave up it seemed. So I'm finding it difficult to accept the reality of her physical presence being no more. Fortunately, her work is still in the world extending her life force even to those who never knew her. Like one of my favorite books of all time: TOMORROW YVONNE, Poetry & Prose for Suicidal Egotists (Punk Hostage Press). Here's part of what I posted when it came out:

Yvonne is an L.A. poet, singer, musician, dancer, spoken word performer, and much more. This is a collection of pieces that she's been reading and performing around L.A. for decades, some newer than that, but a lot have been knocking live audiences out for a while. Including me.

I'll quote my own words that I wrote for her to use on the back of the book:

"Yvonne de la Vega is our steampunk poet laureate, mixing not only the classic and the contemporary in poetic tradition and personal expression but doing it in her uniquely original way. There is no one in the world of poetry quite like her, or the world of anything for that matter."

I hope Yvonne doesn't mind if I reveal that I first dug her as one of the "native girls" who rushed out to meet the plane on the TV show FANTASY ISLAND. Discovering her that way was like the first time I caught Rosie Perez dancing on IN LIVING COLOR. But Yvonne is also the woman who Herb Albert wanted to, and did, record when he heard her read one of her classic poems, "Flamenco Sketches."

She's a self taught performer poet in the classic tradition, and when she's cooking her poems are as much music as language. Many of her best known classic pieces, like "Everything Pink," are too long to quote here, but I'll give you a shorter one that conveys the power of her approach at its best:

In Being My Father's Daughter

                                 -for Daddy, Silvero Duro de la Vega RIP

               June 12, 1928 - May 8, 2007

Because laying on the bare hardwood floor

is too gentle and aesthetic and still

does not offer that masochistic solace, and

because crawling under the bed to weep is

only an instinctive feral urge,

it seems the next thing

that might do it,

that may finally satisfy and replace the urge

to cut my face with an exacto knife, would

be to

break something,

smash all the windows, burn my guitars,

topple the piano, club the TV to pieces,

slash my sofas like the D.E.A.

break all my dishes
...and etc.,
Still, playback of the sequence
"madness as medicine" only
proves that
out of every single object in my home
I can't find one single thing
that can present to me
the perfect punishment,
here and now needed
so badly...
Daddy & I were deemed "wild eccentrics".
Infamous, the both of us from L.A. to Manila.
We remembered being peacocks in a past life together
we never gave a shit about
what the Family thought.
la la la...
I could jump off the roof,
I won't die but it'll hurt.
I did not kill my father.
But someone else did.
Yet I am guilty,
after longing to be with him all
these lost but hopeful years.
Guilty.
Of not being at his side to kiss his mouth at his final sigh,
breathing in to catch and hold his fleeing ghost inside me,
for just one moment for the parting in this lifetime,
our spirits' last embrace
here and now. Instead,
I was fucked up, drunk and jacked up in Hollywood,
when I should have flown straight to Luzon days ago.
I was the worst daughter
he was a worse Father,
which is why I was his favorite, and why
every man
I've ever truly loved
is exactly
Almost Him.

[PS: I might add that Yvonne's prose Preface to the book is worth the price of admission alone, like an introduction to her voice, her life, her unique personality—seductive and engaging, impressive and effective...]

My heart goes out to her kids and all her family and friends and fans. May she Rest In Poetry.

NOW'S THE TIME

7 Stories Press is having a year-end sale, and my book, ANOTHER WAY TO PLAY:Poems 1960-2017, a 540-page "new & selected poems" which is normally a bargain selling for just under twenty dollars can now be purchased from them at just under ten dollars! It would make a great gift for most poetry lovers and supporters of the struggle for LGBTQ+ rights and racial justice and honesty and more. Lots of other "leftist" books on sale as well (including ones by Howard Zinn, Kurt Vonnegut, Noam Chomsky et. al.). Here's the link: https://sevenstories.com/blogs/148-give-the-gift-of-leftist-literature-up-to-85-off

LOVE ACTUALLY (AGAIN)

I just watched the last half of LOVE ACTUALLY for the third or fourth time this holiday season. I'll be surfing cable movie channels and stumble on it and stay. Despite at times it being what some might find a little cheesy or contrived (and let's not even mention that excrutiating scene with Mister Bean doing his gift wrapping schtick) there is so much great acting and clever, even brilliant at times, writing, it wins me over until by the time it reaches the airport arrival montage this old sentimental Irishman is dropping a tear or two. Not as perfect as some other Christmas movies (starting with the 1951 black-and-white Alastair Sim starring version of A CHRISTMAS CAROL) but my favorite in this century.

LYN LIFSHIN R.I.P.

Lyn Lifshin was born the same year I was, 1942, and her poetry started being published in little magazines when they began to blossom and multiply in the 1960s, as my poetry did too. We both had poems in many of the same magazines back then so often, I felt like I knew her, like we were some kind of secret poet friends. I don't remember if we corresponded at all, though I feel like we did.

I was often advised by poet friends that I published too much, and to be more selective about where I published. But my policy was to say yes to life, including anyone who asked for poems. Although whoever wrote the wikipedia entry on me links me to The New York School, and I certainly was influenced by the poets originally self-branded with that name, though they meant it ironically at first, I always felt like an outsider, along with Lyn, even though all the poets in the original generation of The New York School who were still alive when they discovered me in the early 1970s generously accepted me and my work which appeared in many magazines associated with them.

Lyn's work didn't appear in those mags, but in so many others that for every hundred poems of mine published in little mags back in the day, a thousand of her poems were published. I write every day and have since I learned to write as a boy, but Lyn Lifshin has written and published so much more, and most of it distinct, and good.

She deserved a lot more recognition from poets and critics and academics who dismissed or disparaged her kind of poetry (as many have mine), and I'm sorry I never wrote about her until now. Especially since her work has never not been a part of my life. We appeared in magazines together when we started out, and we appeared in a little magazine together just this year! Our poems sharing space in literary magazines for six decades!

As an example of her best work, to my mind, here's a poem of hers that was published in a 1999 Penguin poetry anthology called Identity Lessons edited by Maria Mazziotti Gillan and Jennifer Gillan that I too had a poem in as well:

Yellow Roses

pinned on stiff tulle,
glowed in the painted
high school moonlight.
Mario Lanza's "Oh my
love, my darling"
over the basketball
floor. When Doug
dipped, I smelled
Clearasil. Hours in
the tub dreaming of
Dick Wood's fingers
cutting in, sweeping
me close. I wouldn't
care if the stuck
pin on the roses
went thru me,
the yellow musk
would be a wreath
on the grave of that
awful dance where
Louise and I sat
pretending we didn't
care, our socks fat
with bells and fuzzy
ribbons, bloated and
silly as we felt. I
wanted to be home,
wanted the locked
bathroom to cry in,
knew some part of me
would never stop
waiting to be
asked to dance.