This letter was sent out on the 18th to The Bookstore list, and I was so touched by it I wanted to share it, so here it is:
Michael Lally Another Way to Play: Poems 1960-2017
Friday September 21st at 5:30 p.m.
When I wrote in last week’s letter that I don’t read a lot of poetry, well, that wasn’t quite true. I can remember riding in a car with a bunch of strangers to a poetry reading down in Washington, D.C., this was maybe 1973, and the poet was some guy around my age, skinny like me, too, but way more street smart, just a lot more ‘aware’ of things around him, which is how I have always believed all poets are, well, most of ‘em.
Anyhow it was Michael Lally reading that night, and I’ve been a big fan ever since. The guy seemed to inhabit a world just beyond my own experience, yet I found I could follow along just fine. That was a first-time revelation to me, the literal key to the door to the world of poetry and literature.
Last time he read here at The Bookstore maybe twenty years ago, it was around one of our birthdays, his or mine I can’t quite remember, but I do remember a poem he wrote about meeting someone and forgetting later on he had met her, meeting her again and reading her the poem he’d written about the meeting, not realizing it was the same she he was reading it to.
(He writes it much better than I can tell it. Maybe he’ll read it this time too.) For a good sample of some of his work, here’s a link to his blogspot: http://lallysalley.blogspot.com/
I still have my original copy of one of his early chapbooks Rocky Dies Yellow. I don’t think I realized he’d published over twenty-five books of poetry. Or that he’d read at the Gotham Book Mart sometime after I’d worked there, hosted by my old friend Janey (no relation) Tannenbaum. I think I was up here in Lenox by that time.
All this to say Michael Lally will be reading from his newest collection Another Way to Play: Poems 1960-2017, just published by Seven Stories Press, this coming Friday September 21st at 5:30 p.m. and it is a collection well worth an honored place on your own bookshelf at home. Open it anywhere and you’ll fall right in with his cadence, his storytelling, his ease in sharing with you what he wants you to know:
I did what I did for poetry I thought
and I never sold out, and even when I did
nobody bought
And here’s an extra bonus! Independent filmmaker Rachel Diken, is following the poet on his book tour (Washington, D.C., New York City, the Berkshires) and will be on hand that night with a small crew to record the reading.
Michael Lally: I Want to Call it Poems: A Documentary. Read about that here: https://rachelediken.com/film/
And come to the reading. Friday, September 21st at 5:30 p.m. See you then.
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