SOME BOOKS I READ OR FINISHED OR RE-READ IN 2019 AND RECOMMEND

READ IN 2019:

Nadia Owusu's SO DEVILISH A FIRE
Elaine Equi's THE INTANGIBLES: POEMS
Robert Hershon's END OF THE BUSINESS DAY
Gerald Nicosia's KEROUAC: THE LAST QUARTER CENTURY
Burt Kimmelman's WINGS APART
Justine Bateman's FAME: THE HIGHJACKING OF REALITY
Thomas Devaney's GETTING TO PHILADELPHIA: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS
Bowery Boys' ADVENTURES: OLD NEW YORK
Ernest Thompson's and Mindy Thompson Fullilove Thompson's HOMEBOY CAME TO ORANGE
Mark Berger's SOMETHING'S HAPPENING HERE: A SIXTIES ODYSSEY FROM BROOKLYN TO WOODSTOCK

FINISHED IN 2019:

Eileen Myles' EVOLUTION
Chiwan Choi's THE YELLOW HOUSE
Ron Kolm's A CHANGE IN THE WEATHER
Loneley Christopher's THE RESIGNATION
Joyce Johnson's THE VOICE IS ALL: THE LONELY VICTORY OF JACK KEOUAC

RE-READ IN 2019:

Diane di Prima's RECOLLECTIONS OF MY LIFE AS A WOMAN: THE NEW YORK YEARS
Douglas Crase's THE REVISIONIST AND THE ASTROPASTORALS
Yvonne de la Vega's TOMORROW, YVONNE

STILL SAVORING:

Michael Gizzi's COLLECTED POEMS
Elaine Durbach's ROUNDABOUT

I know there's many more, but these were the ones that came to mind this time. If I forgot a book you may have sent me in 2019 I'm sorry, but I can assure you my compulsiveness made me read it, even if I haven't finished it yet, or have but like I said it didn't come to mind this time.

NEW FAVORITE QUOTE

"The 20 Lessons I've learned in the first 20 years of the new Millennium (because I don't take a lot of photos to do the ten-year thing).

1. Charm can get you through every door, but what keeps you there is the work you did before you knocked.

2. You can’t grow to be who you are in places that only remember you for who you were.

3. If you are truly genuine, nothing is corny

4. Everyone is waiting for a fun, funny, interesting person to start a good conversation.

5. Judging people’s sexuality and fantasies is a good way to end up with a boring sex life.

6. Boundaries will keep you sane.

7. Never be “genre” specific. You miss out on a lot of special by only listening to one sound, viewing one style, or spending time with one type of people.

8. Say “Yes” to life. This moment won’t happen again. So move to that city, it doesn't matter if you don't know anyone. And go to that music festival...even if it means sleeping in your car.

9. Read great literature, and bad literature, and good poetry, and bad poetry, and biographies on the good and the bad. Just fuckin read.

10. Whatever you spend all your time thinking about is what you should be doing.

11. It doesn’t take much to uplift or support the ones around you, everyone needs a pat on the back.

12. There will come a time when you will be alone, full of doubt, sadness, and regret, with only your belief in yourself to cling too, and that must be enough.

13. Stand up straight, look people in the eyes, and smile.

14. Following trends is an excellent way to be interestingly dull. Find your vibe, and live in it. Be passionate, be a classic.

15. If you master your strike zone, you can crush “wild” pitches.

16. Thinking “outside the box” is capitalist bullshit used to drive you into debt with shit you don't need. Learn to make the box unique with what you have.

17. Your life should include both the smell of crisp morning adventure and the taste of late-night stories.

18. People are people, so you have to let them be people.

19. It’s ok not to know where you are going. You’ll figure it out when you figure it out, and you’ll get there when you get there. However, make sure to appreciate and enjoy all the roads you have to take along the way.

20. Being confident is all about knowing that you are doing the best you can to be the best version of yourself; while at the same time being happy with where you are now on that journey.

*********** BONUS #21 ****************

21. Ignore people's additions and critiques to your own list."

—Timmy  Lally (a grand nephew) (and a great nephew too)

THIS

Best thing about last week's Eddie Murphy SNL live (for me) was the two performances by Lizzo. Watch this to the end and dig her and her band and her dancers and tell me it didn't make you happy.

A RECENT FAVORITE QUOTE FROM AN EVANGELICAL CHRISTIAN

ALLEE WILLIS R.I.P.

Allee Willis was a force of nature who I ran into at times in my years in L.A. ('80s and '90s). You can look her up to see what she meant to the music world and the culture of this country, but my most memorable anecdote is much less impactful, except on me. I had an antique shirt from the 1950s, dark blue with a strip of yellow diamond patterns across the chest that I often wore when I read my poetry. After one reading where I wore it, she came up to me afterward to say how much she loved my shirt and how much did I want for it. I said it was an old favorite and not for sale, but she kept going higher and higher, and I kept on resisting. From then on whenever I encountered her she'd ask about the shirt and if I was ready to sell it to her. I never was and still have it, but I'm happy it brought me in contact with such a determined and dynamic  creative soul. May she rest in the power of that creative spirit.

AN OLD SEASONAL POEM OF MINE

HOLIDAY HELL

I always worked on Christmas. Well
not always, since I was about 13.
My father had this home maintenance
business, which meant we cleaned up
after rich people and fixed things in
their homes. There was always a lot
to do around Christmas, including
selling trees out in front of the
little hole-in-the-wall store front.
We had this one special customer who
got this special fifty-foot tree every
year. On Christmas eve, after his kids
went to bed, my brother-in-law the cop,
Joe Glosh (short for Gloshinski) and me
would drive up with the tree and put it
up in the middle of this swirling kind of
Hollywood staircase, wiring it to the
banister here and there until we got it
steady and solid, ready for the silver
dollar tip we always got. My brother-
in-law would always wonder why the best
tree we ever saw always went to a Jew who
didn’t even believe in Christmas, right?
Then he’d drop me back at the store and
go home while I waited there alone just
in case somebody might be waiting til the
last minute to buy a tree. Usually no one
was, and when it turned midnight I could
call the local orphanage and they’d come
by for whatever we had left, which my
old man would let me give them for free and
then I could walk or hitchhike the few miles
home. When we were little my sisters and I
would exchange our gifts before we fell
asleep, because we all lived in the attic
together. The coolest thing was waking in
the morning with this sound, like crunchy
paper, and realizing it was our stockings
at the foot of the beds that our ma had
always somehow got up there without us
catching her, and we’d get to open up all
our stocking stuff before we woke the rest
of the folks, our older brothers and grand-
mother and the border, Jack, and our mom
and dad. Then we’d all open stuff and go
to Mass and come home for the big dinner.
But by the time I got the attic to myself,
cause my brother-in-law and that sister
got a place of their own and my other sister
joined the nunnery for awhile, I got to
working for the parks department too,
because my old man didn’t pay me, figuring
I worked for room and board, so I had these
other jobs, and the parks department had a
busy day on Christmas cause all these kids
would come down to the park to try their
new sleds or skates and I worked either on
the hill or on the pond as a sort of guard
and coach and general alarm man. I used to
love seeing a wreck on the hill so I could
slide down the snow on my engineer boots,
the kind motorcycle dudes wear now, showing
off my teenaged skill and balance for the
teenaged girls who might be watching. I
don’t remember ever falling down, it was
something I was totally confident about. Now
that I think about it, I guess working on
Christmas wasn’t so bad, even though I always
kind of felt sad anyway, especially after I
started dating black girls and knew I couldn’t
take them home or share the holidays much
with them, but there was always something sad
about Christmas anyway, once you were over five
or maybe ten, how could it ever live up to your
expectations again? I also dug being a
working guy though, you know? Even today
when I see young working guys going by in
the backs of pickup trucks I catch their eye
and feel like I know what’s going through
their heads, because of what was going
through mine, which was, any time now I’ll be
out of this, a big star or wheeler dealer or
intellectual or anything that means a kind of
success you couldn’t guess when you look at
me here under these conditions, cause now,
I’m a mystery to you, you don’t know who I
am, you think you can categorize me but you
got no idea who I might be someday, or the
the richness of the life I live inside, and
you’ll never know what it’s like to be as
cool as I sometimes feel when you look at me
and see a guy from some kind of ethnic mystery
you can’t comprehend except in the most simplistic
terms, and who is so free he can work in public
and get dirty and sweat and wear his hair greasy
and his tee shirt rolled and know you would never
mess with him unless you’re a woman and get a whim
to find out what it’s like to give a piece of ass
to someone from the working class—I dug the
kind of coolness of it, of knowing I was a lot more
than these ordinary citizens could comprehend,
that I could be sexy in ways their men were too
restrained to be, that I could be threatening in
ways their men would be too frightened to be, that
I could get down and dirty and not give a fuck
what I looked like in public, even though I knew
I looked cool, that I could be inside a life and
world they could never even guess the intensity and
romanticism and pure exhilaration of because it
didn’t depend on material goods and worldly
success but on loyalty and honesty and standing
up for yourself and all the rest of your kind
when you were put to the test—hell I used to
love looking back into their eyes and thinking
some day they’ll be so surprised to find out
what was going on in my head when I put it in
a book or on film or tell them about it in their
bed—so even though I came home late for the
big dinner and my fingers and toes all froze
cause guys like us could never make a fuss about
the cold by wearing scarves or gloves or any of
that rich kid stuff, and maybe I’d get a little
drunk when nobody was looking and try to get the
phone into the closet or somewhere where I could
be alone for a few minutes to call some girl
they might call colored and wrong, and end up
later that night sleeping on the floor of the
kitchen with the new puppy so he wouldn’t keep
everyone awake with his scared yelps and in the
morning scandalize my grandmother when she found
me in my boxer shorts the puppy asleep on my
chest and she’d rouse me and make me get dressed
but not without telling me I was just like my
father, I didn’t have any ashes, which was her
way of implying I didn’t have any ass to speak
of, and then I’d help her get her stockings over
her crippled legs and have something to eat and
go to work again, maybe this time on the pond,
where I’d get to slide across the ice to rescue
stumbling teenaged girls while “Earth Angel” or
“Blue Christmas” blared over the loudspeakers
and in my heart, knowing for sure I was going
to be a part of some important history, and I
was—and still am.

(C) 1997, 2018 Michael Lally

RAM DASS R.I.P.

BE HERE NOW!