DOUG LANG R.I.P.

 

I've posted these photos before of poets Terence Winch, Doug Lang, and me in DC in the late 1970s and 2018 (Doug's the only one with facial hair in the early shot). He was born and raised in Wales. I first knew of him from his 1973 end-of-the-'60s paperback novel, FREAKS, that he always seemed embarrassed by but I dug and still have. The rest of his output was poetry as original and impressive as anyone's of our rapidly diminishing generation (type in his name on my blog LALLY'S ALLEY, to find posts I've written about his work).

He had an encyclopedic knowledge of literature, music, movies, and art, and was always fun to discuss any of that with, even after losing his short term memory in recent years. He often seemed slightly amused, or bemused, by my excited enthusiasm about my own taste in the arts, but in any encounter I always felt the love we had for each other underneath it all. My condolences to all who knew and loved him, especially Terence, Sandra, Phyllis, Bernie, and Susan et al.