HAPPY B'DAY EMILY

On this year's Emily Dickinson's birthday I commemorate her with photos of me with two poets whose poems share many qualities with hers (and from my perspective their personalities share aspects as well). See for yourself by finding these books: James Haining's A QUINCY HISTORY (his journals from the early 1970s which includes early poems and how he wrote them as well as observations about being a small press publisher and witness to my and my then wife Lee's early gay activism) and Elaine Equi's RIPPLE EFFECT or THE INTANGIBLES.

Jim Haining (long gone unfortunately) and me at ARTQUAKE in Portland OR in the '90s

Elaine Equi and me at The Cornelia Street Cafe NYC a year or two ago

IMAGINE

https://blog.bestamericanpoetry.com/the_best_american_poetry/2020/07/michael-lally-pick-of-the-week-terence-winch.html

PRETTY CLEVER MEME GOING AROUND

 

TODAY

The zoom poetry and art event today by LIVE! magazine was a total delight, but I apologize that there were technical problems with the links so some folks trying to log on, couldn't...but there were over fifty people at one point so it worked for some other people (I ended up waiting as well but eventually got in).

I was honored and humbled by the magazine's "Life Achievement Award" and by Annabel Lee surprising me with a terrific reading of my poem "Just Let Me Do It" from 1974 in the collection of love poems of mine she published (through her Vehicle Editions): JUST LET ME DO IT. And lovely words for my work from Greg Masters and some of his own poems.

Great to see old friends and new in the Zoom Brady Bunch boxes, and to see the art of the other award recipient Willie Birch and hear the acceptance speech read by his daughter Ama and be introduced to the art of Lida Griggs.  All in all a delightful and fulfilling event. 

CHECK IT OUT: ZOOM IT TOMORROW 2PM EASTERN

 

LiVE MAG! #17 LAUNCH & AWARDS   Lifetime    Achievement     Willie Birch Michael Lally with Ama Birch Linda Griggs Greg Masters artwork by Willie Birch, ca 1984

Sunday, December 6, 2pm  Please join your hosts Jeff, Lori, and Sanjay for the launch of Live Mag! #17 as we present our latest issue and also recognize lifetime achievement in the arts. For our third year of annual presentations, we are proud to award artist WILLIE BIRCH and poet MICHAEL LALLY with LiVE MAG! Lifetime Achievement Awards. Zoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/5218539132?pwd=M0VQak1JZ0lBOEE3Rzk2U1BBSUd4UT09 Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10158192575392991&set=gm.164386908719284

ROOTS

Got to enlarge to read this 1956 local newspaper notice about my Irish-born paternal grandparents celebrating their 60th wedding anniversary. The family laugh is that it says they met in the 1880s or '90s at "The Essex County Country Club" but doesn't add: where she was a scullery maid and he was a footman. He died not long after this and she "took to her bed" to follow him, almost willing it, as it seemed to me. Her last words to me were: "I can hear your grandfather complaining' to the angels for not cookin' the scrapple the way he likes it, so I've got to go take care of him."
 

WORLD AIDS AWARENESS DAY

 
Today is AIDS awareness day so I'm remembering even more than usual the friends and lovers lost to that earlier pandemic. The photo above is of my dear friend poet Tim Dlugos (in glasses holding the can of beer) around 1974 the year before we each left DC for NYC.

Tim and I were so close, many thought we were lovers, but we were just best friends (the opposite was true for other casualties of HIV AIDS that people thought were only friends but were my lovers, some of whom died while still trying to hide the cause of their demise in those days of shaming and affliction by association).

It's almost impossible for those who didn't live through it to understand the impact so much illness and death caused in the gay communities around this country. It's like each city with a concentration of gay men, particularly New York and San Francisco, were the equivalent of giant nursing homes afflicted by the latest pandemic. Only worse.

Here's another photo of Tim at my wedding at JS Vandam in NYC in February 1982, months before I moved to LA (with poet Ted Berrigan (bearded) as well). That smile of Tim's was even more radiant in person. I miss him and so many other casualties of the AIDS epidemic every day.