TINA DARRAGH R.I.P.

Too many deaths (as always) to comprehend, but wanted to mark the recent passing of poet Tina Darragh. I met her when I started teaching (Modern Lit, Creative Writing etc.) at Trinity College (now University) in the Fall of 1969 in DC, where she was an undergraduate and one of my students. At the time, she was the head of the Young Republicans on campus, but soon moved away from that choice.

Tina reminded me of some of my first generation Irish-American aunts, so I treated her like family. One of my favorite poets at that moment was Francis Ponge and Tina and I got deep into his unique approach to prose poetry (admittedly in English translations from the French). She also helped me and  my then wife Lee Lally, and Terence Winch and a few other poets, start a weekly open poetry series, Mass Transit, and Some Of Us Press to publish slim volumes of poetry (chapbooks) by local poets we all agreed on. 

She lived for a while in the commune my household turned into, (while she worked as a waitress in a nearby Toddle House) and was a great supporter when I came out as gay (identifying as bi-sexual seeming like a cop-out) and Trinity "let me go." She organized a school-wide strike, but I talked her and others out of it, deciding it was time to move on anyway. She also helped me organize a protest calling for statues of politicians and military men all over DC to be replaced by statues of poets and writers and artists etc. like Gertrude Stein and Billie Holiday.

She had a small press for a while called Dry Imager, and published a side-stapled xeroxed collage art and poetry double book by her (called My First Play, if I remember correctly) and me (called Malenkov Takes Over). She is recognized (but not enough) as one of the pioneers of the "Language Poetry" movement, but her work transcended any categories. She and her creative output were unique. 

She remained in the DC area while I moved around the country, but whenever I saw her over the years, I felt the connection we had from the beginning of our friendship and hope she did too.

Condolences to her husband and son and all her family, friends, and fans.

AIDS DAY

i lost a lot of dear close friends as well as ex-lovers to AIDS, and don't know why it missed me, but that's my personal and all of our international history, and these jokers trying to erase that history can try all they want but will always fail cause you and me aint gonna forget or shut up about it

NOVEMBER SONNET

On a perfectly clear Fall day, heading back to

Fort Monmouth, I watched as other cars on

The Garden State Parkway veered onto the

shoulder and stopped, the drivers not getting

out, just sitting there. At the toll booth the man

said The president's been shot. As I drove on,

more cars pulled off the road. I could see their

drivers weeping. Back in the barracks we stayed

in the rec room watching the black and white

TV, tension in the room like static. When they

named Lee Harvey Oswald, I watched the

black guys hold their breath, hoping that meant

redneck, not spade, and every muscle in their

faces relax when he turned out to be white.

[(C) 2018 Michael Lally from Another Way To Play]

PENELOPE MILFORD R.I.P.

 

Penny and I got married on Valentine's Day 1982, about six months after we met. I had gone to see another actor in the play FISHING and afterwards our eyes, Penny's and mine, connected and that was that. It was a brief, passionate, volatile marriage, long ago.

What I'll remember most: her vivacious smile, her magnificent acting, her rambunctiousness, her stubbornness, and her (maybe too often misdirected) willingness to speak truth to power, including mine. Rest In peace and Power kid.

(wedding invitation by Joe Brainard)

BEERRY BERENSON R.I.P. 9/11

 

Berry Berenson was a friend to me in my early years in Hollywood. She was married to the movie star Tony Perkins at the time and until his death in 1992. They seemed really loving to each other and I admired their relationship. And I admired her.

Though she was often noted more as Perkin's wife or as model/actress Marisa Berenson's sister, Berry was a wonderful actor in her own right (see REMEMBER MY NAME). But despite her fame-for-whatever-reason, at least around me she was always the least pretentious or self-centered person I ever met anywhere.

She came to a play I was in early on in L.A, Landford Wilson's BALM IN GILEAD, and after the performance stuck around to talk to me. One of the things she said to me that night was that she had only seen one other person in her life who had the kind of glow, I think that was the word she used, that I had, and that was Marilyn Monroe!

She was wonderful on screen and off, either in front of the camera or behind it (she was a great photographer), and I only wish, as I too often do with many friends, that I had made more of an effort to see her more often. Especially after I heard the news that she had been on one of the two planes that crashed into The World Trade Center towers on 9/11.

I knew some others who went down with the towers on that tragic day, like Father Mike Judge, but Berry is the one I think of most often. As I later wrote in a poem ("March 18, 2003"), she was:

"a woman who was kind to me when
she didn't need to be[...]
How many people have died
before you got the chance to tell them what you meant to?"

R.I.P. to all those we lost on that horrific day (and those we continue to lose).

BEST AMERICAN POETRY 2025

 

Poetry of mine in this just released latest "Best" for 2025. Grateful to be included.

LONI ANDERSON R.I.P.

My only encounter with Loni Anderson was when I was hired for what turned out to be a single short scene in a TV movie called: My Mother's Secret Life. Loni played a hooker and I one of her johns, a construction worker. It was shot on location in San Francisco, so I was flown up and put in a hotel to report on set early the next morning.

When I showed up at the hair & makeup trailer, Loni was already being worked on and after being introduced we ran our few lines and then chatted while people buzzed around her. Then a youngish man burst in and began yelling about her being late to the set and holding up filming. It was around 8AM and she had already mentioned that she'd been there since 6AM, but the man didn't care.

Sometimes in situations like that, where a woman was being berated, I'd ask them "You want me to knock him out?" and the guys would back off, because they weren''t ready or willing to "throw some hands" as we called it when I was a kid (and I knew that of course, I wasn't that brave), but before I could she apologized and disarmed him, and me, with her humble and seemingly genuine sincerity.

The scene I was in took place on a sidewalk under scaffolding. When they called for our stand ins so the lighting could be set, Loni told hers to take her seat and she'd do the tedious standing in place while lights and reflectors were arranged and rearranged. This was the first time I'd had a stand in (the two indie horror movies I'd starred in didn't have them) so I followed Loni's lead and told mine to take my seat while I stood with Loni.

The lighting guy was up on a ladder looking down at us, focused on Loni, and she was talking to him like they were old friends as she began asking about the wattage or something technical and I listened as she very sweetly and humbly asked questions seemingly innocently that got him to change his choices to what she was nudging him toward.

I was so impressed that she not only knew what these technicians were doing and what with, but that she used all her glamour plus her one-of-the-gang camaraderie, to influence how the camera would capture her. Just the amount of work she did to make this one little scene work for her was beyond what I was willing to expend. And during all this she was also joking with me, charming me, and deflecting my attempts at flirting like a seasoned hockey goalie deflecting pucks. 

I admired her ever after, and still do. My condolences to all her family, friends, and fans.