GOOD POINT

 

HARRY E. NORTHUP'S TO ASK FOR LOVE

When I finished reading poet/actor/friend Harry Northup's latest collection of poetry, To Ask For Love, I thought this is the greatest book of love poems ever written (including my own Just Let Me Do It).

What I meant was that To Ask For Love moved me more than any book of love poems I've ever read. 

DALE HERD R.I.P.

ODE TO DALE HERD

It’s June of 2026 and I just recently learned

that you died in January.

I would have sworn we talked on the phone since then,

but obviously not, except in my mind.

All these months when you were gone

and I didn't know it, you’ve been alive

to me,

and so you will remain.

I initially learned of you in 1972

through your first book, Early Morning Wind.

I wrote a review of it in The Washington Post

in which I called you the Hemingway of our generation,

only better.

Despite that and other attention

(like Ginsberg in an interview calling you

his favorite prose writer), that book

didn't get as much notice nor accolades

as I believed it deserved.

Ten years later, in 1982, I moved to Santa Monica

with my two kids from my first marriage

and my second wife, Penelope Milford, an actor

poet Lewis MacAdams brought you to meet

at the house we rented there

to discuss a video project based on an excerpt

from a novel you were working on

and would continue to be for many more years.

When Lewis introduced me to you and we shook hands,

you looked me in the eye and said "Thank you,

that kept me going for another five years”.

Lewis and Penny didn't know what

you were talking about.

But I did.

In many ways we were opposites:

skinny East Coast black Irish jive talkin’

motor mouth let-it-all-hang-out city boy

and West Coast no-time-for-bullshit

keep-it-to-yourself all-American (to me)

athletic blonde steady-Eddie surfer boy.

But what we had in common was

we weren’t boys anymore

both in our forties by then

and we were both outsiders in the literary world

not just for the down and dirty subjects we wrote about,

but for our working class ways

that made us prickly around some fellow literary folks.

And we both wrote every day and

were both in LA to try and finally

turn our dedication to the word into

actual money you could live on.

We became instant friends.

You told me how you’d spent years

living out of a van, never more than a mile from the ocean

rising every morning to surf,

then sitting on the couch you slept on in the van,

doors open to the sea, you'd write.

 

The Spanish style one-story ranch house

Penny and I rented had a one-room second story

over the garage with electricity but no plumbing

that you moved into, becoming part of our family

coming down to the house to use the facilities or

join us for a meal or just to talk,

you and I having deep discussions about everything

but mostly about writing the scripts we were working on

and trying to sell, sharing strategies for doing so.

You often advised me on how to present myself

to the people who could green light projects.

Like when I was desperate for money to pay the bills

and felt the need to let anyone and everyone know

you told me the story of the Samurai warrior

roaming the countryside who hadn’t eaten for days 

when he came to a town, before entering it

found a small tree and using his sword cut

a toothpick size splinter off a low hanging branch

and walked down the middle of the main street

picking his teeth as though he’d just eaten.

It didn’t change my TMI behavior

but from then on you were always that Samurai to me.

Our little mini-commune didn’t last very long

after my marriage fell apart and once again

me and my kids were on our own.

We moved into an apartment and I found 

side hustles to pay the rent like driving a limo,

while you moved into a one-room storefront

with newspaper covering the big front window

for a little privacy in a neighborhood in downtown LA 

definitely more than a mile from any beach.

When I visited you there I was always impressed

with how you’d have one phrase or sentence

written on a blackboard so you could sit and study it

a la Flaubert, as we both had read.

It was during this time that you met Deborah

your future wife and life mate,

an encounter you told me all about,

a writer too you were impressed by

how smart and talented she was,

and kind,

as you later would be also

by the three sons you two would have.

When in the late nineties i had another child

with yet a third wife, and moved back East

we kept in touch regularly by phone and email

and saw each other when i came to LA or you to New York

right up until recently, and always

the first thing you’d talk about would be

your sons and Debbie,

proud of their achievements and intelligence

and goodness.

You’d always be sensitive to my health challenges

but elusive when I’d try to get you to talk about your own.

Until, like I said I just learned, you died in January

though I could have sworn

we talked on the phone since then, yet

obviously not, except in my mind.

All these months when you’ve been gone

and I didn't know it, you’ve been alive

to me,

and so will you always be.

[most accessible introduction to Dale's writing is the short story collection Empty Pockets,

but his novel Dreamland Court is his greatest achievement (though formidable, once you commit it's totally compelling), and "A Seafaring Man", an eight-minute documentary his wife Deborah Blum made, is the best summary of his life story]

[Not sure when this photo of Dale and me was taken but looks like at poetry reading I did at Beyond Baroque in Venice Beach CA in the early 2000s] 

MOTHER'S DAY 2026 [with my favorite photo of my mother in the 1920s]

 MOTHER’S DAY 1978

It’s raining

like Good Friday

or so we believed

when we were kids

that somehow the

weather reflected

our Catholic faith

& honored the death

of the Son of God

with rain or at leas

 clouds and greyness

and this the day my

mother died 12 years

ago when I was 23

& thought myself too

old to feel too alone

with the passing of

someone I rarely saw

and was afraid to let

know me too well but

felt amazingly intimate

with nonetheless because

she was a woman and I

loved women and knew

that between her thighs

out of the place I loved

most to be I had once

been for the first time

going the other direction

out into the world she

seemed so able to maintain

her innocence in, even

after seven kids, an

alcoholic husband, all

the deaths big families

live through and even

the crazy betrayals of

her standards and beliefs

by her baby who didn’t

come around much anymore

but was there by her side

when the struggle with

whatever came to take her

began and she called out

for her oldest the priest

and for her baby who rose

to take her hand and let

her see he was there but

her eyes showed fear and

anger and confusion at what

I was sure she took to be

a stranger because of the

beard that was just another

sign of my estrangement

from these people who had

once thought I would be

some kind of answer to

the questions that the

future perplexed them with

constantly these days

only instead I grew away

from them, and on my returns

always disturbed them with

my latest alteration in

my movement toward knowing

what I might be as well as

what I had been and them

and when the nurse came in

to turn off the machines

and their ominous low hum

that graphically displayed

my mother’s loss to whatever

it was that had frightened

her so, I felt so fucking bad

for adding to that loss with

my stupid disguise that when

we got home, 3AM on Mother’s

Day 1966 to tell our father

the news I left my brothers

and sisters and in-laws to

shave off the mask to discover

the skin beneath the months’

old growth of hair as tender

as a baby’s, my chin my

cheeks the skin around my

lips all soft and white and

delicate like a lady’s, a

side I was yet to discover

for myself all I knew then

was I would never let that

disguise hide me from the

world I had yet to realize

I understood more from her

sure knowledge passed on to

the child I had been than all

the books and experiences and

hip friends I had gone to since

but when I came downstairs they

all thought I had done it for

him and were grateful I had

been thoughtful of those left

behind especially he who had

taught us most of what we knew

about life it seemed to them

though without her he might

have been the narrowminded

crank he sometimes was although

he too knew how to use his

emotions to understand and that

must have been what brought them

together or perhaps what kept

them there but even in death

the nature of their relationship

took on the security of her care

as the oldest sister read the

note found in the hospital

drawer with her personal stuff

letting us know she knew what

we had only half suspected that

this was it and we’d be left

without the spiritual wisdom

she had offered unwittingly as

she spoke to us once again when

my sister read where daddy’s

medicine could be found and what

dosages he should take and where

she’d left the newly cleaned

shorts and shirts and how he

liked his meals and when and

who should remember to take

their insulin and who among

all these children who were so

long since grown and running

homes of their own but still

so near and dependent on her

she understood in the guts that

were half gone and caused the

heart to close down she knew

they needed to know she’d

never be gone for good but

was only giving advice from

another home the one she had

convinced them could be theirs

because it had always been hers

and now she was there waiting

once again for her babies to

bring their confusion and fear

and strangeness in a world so

far removed from what their

world had given them she was

that world more than any son

of god could ever have been

but she left them to him anyway

despite the reality I saw in

her eyes when whatever it was

came to take her from inside

it wasn’t any meek and loving

lord unless she took him for

some fearsome stranger too as

she had me and I had her for

all the years I never knew how

much I owed her just for never

giving in but always giving . . .

(from ATTITUDE and ANOTHER WAY TO PLAY)

(C) Michael Lally 1982 and 2018

PARKINSON'S AWARENESS MONTH AND POETRY MONTH (every month to me)

 I Meant To

I meant to put those
sixty-three names
and email addresses
in the BCC blind copy
space, not the CC 
copy space. I meant to

send it to him, not her.
I meant to swallow not
drool, on the computer,
my lap, your sleeve, my
arm, the floor, that first
edition, in the drawer.

I meant to walk and
move with that feline
grace someone once
said I had, not wobble
and stagger like an
old wino. I meant to

hit the “y” not the “t”
the “h” not the “g”
the “b” not the “v”,
return not send,
amends not amen.
I meant to stand up

straight not bend, to
sit upright not slouch,
to not fall down and
get stuck between the
couch and a hot pipe
that burned my back

like the prolonged
sting of a fierce slap.
I meant to stay twenty-
nine or forty-nine, not
be seventy-nine turn-
ing eighty in May this

way, drooling and
stumbling and un-
able to make a fist
with my right hand
or grasp a utensil in
the proper way but

instead need foam
additions to the
handles for my one
or two fingers that
can still curl without
help. I meant to be

the exception to
obviously aging or
a long gone legend
by now not a bent
over drooling old
man who still often

feels like a woman
inside, but I’ll accept
what I’m left with for
as long as I can and
still be grateful for all
that I’ve been and am.

—Michael Lally (C)) 2021

appeared on the Best American Poetry blog, 7 Jan 2022

and is included in Best American Poetry 2023 (Scribner, 2023)

OLD FRIENDS

 

Two of my closest friends for over fifty years came to visit. Karen Allen who lives nearby so visits regularly and Terence Winch who lives in DC where we all first met and hasn't been here in over three years but I talk to on the phone at least weekly. My lap is covered by a hand towel and a paper towel to deal with my unpredictable and uncontrollable drooling, and I'm not giving the finger, that finger is just usually inadvertently stiff (from arthritis and Parkinson's related dystonia), both of which (the drooling and stiff middle finger) seem appropriately poetic justice for me .

MARY BETH HURT R.I.P.

When I heard that Mary Beth Hurt had passed, my first instinct was to call poet Ray DiPalma, forgetting he passed years ago. I first knew of her through him, when we were all students at the U of Iowa in the 1960s and her last name was still Supinger (I wrote about this in "The Iowa City Sonnets" section of my last book SAY IT AGAIN).

She was in the theater department and I was a married veteran working on a BA and MFA in poetry (simultaneously) on the GI Bill, after four years in the military. Ray was in the Poetry Workshop too, but also acted in almost every play the theater department put on, which is where I first saw him and was totally impressed.

Mary Beth was an incredibly nice person to me always. Born and raised in Iowa, no matter how many awards her acting garnered her, she never lost that midwestern down-to-earth unpretentiousness. One of my favorite memories is of a day we spent roller skating in Central Park probably in the the early 1980s.

I had done some roller disco skating but never outdoors and it had been a while, but when I arrived at her place she had already made this plan for us, and though I was afraid I might fall on may ass or make a fool of myself in some other way, I didn't. Partly because she didn't make it competitive or in any way about showing off.

As for the photo, here's what I wrote in a post from 2014:  

"I have no idea who took the shot, my copy is a slide from which I had this photo made and then scanned it. It's the great film actress Mary Beth Hurt caught reading my book HOLLYWOOD MAGIC. Not sure when, but the book came out in 1982, just after I moved to L.A. and Mary Beth still lived in New York, as I remember it.

I visited her apartment there once when she was dating Kevin Kline, I think, or just afterwards, before she married the director and screenwriter Paul Shrader, and while I was sitting in perhaps that chair, I noticed a big flower pot with a plant in it had words painted on the side and they seemed familiar, so I asked where they were from. She thought I was messing with her but finally realized I wasn't and said they were from a poem of mine [in the book JUST LET ME DO IT].

I no longer remember what they were or which poem, but I remember how happy it made me. I was just at the beginning of the change that would later come from which I would grow into the understanding that it isn't how many people read your work or see your work, or experience your work in whatever way they do, but simply that someone who does, actually gets it. Which Mary Beth did, and for which I am eternally grateful."

The last time I saw her was at a WGA Awards event at The Beverly Hills Hotel where a friend was nominated and invited me along. She wass there with her husband Paul, but we found a spot away from the hubbub to sit and catch up, and though I felt like I'd gone through a thousand changes since we first met so many years ago, and I'd guess she may have felt the same, for me she was just Mary Beth from Marshalltown Iowa, my longtime down-to-earth friend.

Condolences to her family, friends, and fans, of which the latter two I count myself among.