SOME PERSONAL HIGHLIGHTS OF 2018

my youngest son turning 21 and becoming someone you can trust and admire, a role model for me (and others) in many ways...

the continued health and happiness of my other children and grandchildren, despite challenges...

the publication of a selection of a lifetime of poetry (ANOTHER WAY TO PLAY: Poems 1960-2017) by Dan Simon and 7 Stories Press, sparked by Paul Abruzzo's suggestion and initial selection of poems he'd include to help me focus on my own choices...

the book tour for ANOTHER WAY TO PLAY, organized by Rachel E. Diken (and Allison Paller and others at 7 Stories), and Rachel and Eve Bandstein convincing me to end the tour in California where I think I may have given the best reading of my life at Beyond Baroque in Venice Beach...

The documentary film Rachel is making about the book tour and me (called MICHAEL LALLY: I WANT TO CALL IT POEMS), and all those who contributed to making that happen (the only thing I have to do with the film is being interviewed and suggesting others to interview, I haven't seen any footage except what's already been made public), and Rachel's getting the film under a non-profit documentary support group so individuals and groups and charities etc. can make tax-deductible contributions to help get the film completed...

and a lot more, including my still being around to appreciate all of the above...

COLETTE

Keira Knightley is totally miscast as the title character in COLETTE, but as always she so completely commits to the role she overcomes that obstacle. And it doesn't hurt that the cinematography and art production on this film are Oscar worthy, and the filmmakers so Britishize the iconic French author's story, they even use "Down By The Salley Gardens" to fill in for a French provincial song!

In my thirties I attended a fancy dinner party in New York with the cream of the Manhattan cultural elite (at least as I saw it then) where someone asked my opinion of Colette (as a writer) and I admitted I hadn't read her. A shocked silence ensued until the poet and dance critic Edwin Denby saved me by saying, "How I envy you Michael, that you have that to look forward to."

Needless to say I went out the next day and bought every book of hers translated into English and every book about her. She soon became one of my favorite authors and people. COLETTE the film focuses on her emergence from the French countryside to become the famous author she still is. Part of the reason I fell in love with Colette and her story was her unconventional sex life, which I identified with, as well as her talent for reinventing herself and her life. And this movie captures that lusciously.

Worth seeing (for my taste).

MORTY SKLAR R.I.P.

I got this photo off the Internet but wouldn't know if it's accurate or not because I haven't seen a photo of Morty Sklar since the 1970s and if my memory is correct I never even met him in person. I knew him through the old kind of mail you waited for the mailman (back then) to deliver to your actual mailbox. Morty was a New Yorker who was displaced a few times to Iowa City after I had left there in 1969.

He was one of the originators of the poetry movement called "Actualism" which he and others included me in initially (until I published a poem I wrote that mentioned I was included in without being asked or understanding exactly what it was (which no one ever definitively did I finally realized). The true founder was Darrel Gray, a dear friend who passed long ago.

Morty also edited and published the poetry magazine THE SPIRIT THAT MOVES US, in which he published poems of mine after he asked me to submit some. I have our correspondence in my archives (at NYU) but haven't seen his letters since the 1970s, but my memory of our contact is a happy one. I thought of him as a really good guy, honest, authentic, no front or bs, just digging what he dug and wanting to share it with anyone interested. Which could be said of all of us little magazine editors and publishers and poets back in the day.

I hear he passed pretty peacefully, loved ones nearby. I remember him fondly and offer my condolences to his loved ones and all those who loved him. Rest In Poetry Morty.

SOME MORE PHOTOS OF THE LA EVENT (TAKEN BY JOHN ANDRULIS)

AFTERNOON MINI-RANT

I found this meme on FaceBook and felt compelled to share it because I so totally agree with the sentiment. I've been digging the uniqueness of the Kurdish culture since I first read about them as a boy (in National Geographic?). If you don't know, they are a distinct ethnic group in The Middle East who were deprived of a homeland when Europeans created the map for the countries there, so what is their natural homeland became a part of several other countries (Turkey, Syria, Iraq, et. al.) who then treated the Kurds' aspirations as terrorism. The governments and political movements and parties that have come out of the Kurdish culture are the most gender equal, democratic, and economically balanced of any in the Middle East (or much of the world for that matter). They should be our main ally in The Middle East in terms of the values we supposedly share, but instead we cozy up to ruthless dictatorships and misogynist oligarchies etc. and abandon the Kurds over and over again.  Bah.

FAVORITE MOVIES OF 2018

Happy Christmas to all who celebrate it, and
here's another couplets list, taken from 2018 posts,
a list of some of my favorite movies I saw in 2018
(with the caveat that there's still a bunch I need to see):

A STAR IS BORN
BLACKKKLANSMAN

BLACK PANTHER
BLINDSPOTTING

CRAZY RICH ASIANS
DON'T WORRY: HE WON'T GET FAR ON FOOT

EIGHTH GRADE
FACES PLACES

JULIET NAKED
LOVE, SIMON

OCEAN'S 8
OH LUCY!

RBG
ROMA

SATURDAY CHURCH
SORRY TO BOTHER YOU

THE DEATH OF STALIN
THE SPY WHO DUMPED ME

TO ALL THE BOYS I'VE LOVED BEFORE
WON'T YOU BE MY NEIGHBOR?

THE QUESTION