LOVE, JOE

[I'll only be there on video, and my reading includes graphic sex  so be forewarned] 

Love, Joe – an evening celebrating the publication of Love, Joe: The Selected Letters of Joe Brainard Wednesday | 10/30 | 7:30pm reception, 8pm event | The Parish Hall @ St Mark's Church

Please join us for an evening celebrating the publication of Love, Joe: The Selected Letters of Joe Brainard, edited by Daniel Kane. Joe Brainard was one of the most distinctive figures on New York City’s vibrant cultural scene in the 1960s and 1970s. Widely known for his influential experimental memoir, I Remember, Brainard worked in a variety of forms, from New-York-School-aligned poetry to Pop-Art-adjacent artworks, including wild riffs on the comic strip character Nancy. Love, Joe presents a selection of Brainard’s letters that stretch from 1959 to 1993 addressed to artists and friends such as John Ashbery, Ted Berrigan, Alice Notley, Fairfield Porter, Bernadette Mayer, James Schuyler, Alex Katz, and Andy Warhol. The letters, edited and annotated by Daniel Kane, allow readers to witness an extraordinarily fertile moment in New York’s history, when literary and visual arts intersected with happenings, proto-punk and psychedelic rock concerts, and experimental music and dance performances. The evening will include readings by Tyhe Cooper, Kyle Dacuyan, Heather Denton, Mike Funk, Brad Gooch, Vincent Katz, Michael Lally, Ann Lauterbach, Keith McDermott, Ron Padgett, Anne Waldman, and Nicole Wallace. We hope you can join us at 7:30pm for a reception before the event. This event will also be livestreamed for free on The Poetry Project's YouTube channel.

TICKETS

Daniel Kane's publications include All Poets Welcome: the Lower East Side Poetry Scene in the 1960s (2003), We Saw the Light: Conversations between the New American Cinema and Poetry (2009), and Do You Have a Band? Poetry and Punk Rock in New York City (2017). He lives in Copenhagen and teaches American literature at Uppsala University in Sweden.

FYI 2

 click here 

FYI THIS SATURDAY

 

Can't get this announcement to scale correctly but if you hit on the LINK part this Saturday the 26th at 5pm eastern, it should connect you to a poetry reading I'll be doing via zoom with 3 other poets, could be interesting.   LiVE MAG! & Lit Balm Present     EYES LEFT      A Needed Dose of Hip   Michael Lally    Brendan Lorber    Elinor Nauen    Larry Sawyer

Please join us for a recital of legends.     Saturday, October 26       5pm EST set.EST     Link to join Zoom    https://us04web.zoom.us/j/461603228   This invitation brought to you by Live Mag!   SUBSCRIBE!   https://store.livemag.org/

MARSHALL NORSTEIN R.I.P.

When I moved back to Jersey from LA in 1999, I lived with my wife and our toddler in a two-family house in a row of two-family houses whose backyards backed into a branch of the Rahway River. Most of our neighbors had children too, who used the connected backyards like their own private playground which it was. One of our neighbors, Marshall, was the acknowledged overseer of the place.

His day job entailed carrying tons of equipment on the train to Manhattan where he photographed precious artifacts for the catalogues of the big auction houses. But his real vocation was creating new ways for making folks happy. He made a great swing on a giant tree by tying a rope to an arrow and shooting it over the strongest limb then detaching the arrow and attaching a seat he made. He put up a zip line for kids and adults to ride on. He built a smoker for ribs and other meats which we partook of during warm weather when we all sat around his picnic tables and contributed our own dishes to the dinners we shared.

He was always ready to help whoever needed some handy work done. When we threw a surprise birthday party for him we called to say we had a plumbing problem and he came right over with his toolbox and was genuinely moved and surprised. As real estate prices rose and so did our rents, we all dispersed to other neighborhoods, but continued to get together for holidays and hang outs. And Marshall continued altering things for the better, like an old junked Mercedes he fixed to run on cooking oil.

Digital cameras ended his day job, but he got a new one as maintenance man for the local Ethical Culture Center that also supplied a top floor for his family to reside. Last Sunday morning bringing home a bag of bagels for his family, he collapsed and died in the entryway to the building, quick but unexpected, and way too soon.

My heart goes out to his wife, journalist and novelist Elaine Durbach, and son Gabe, and all his family and friends. He will be sorely missed.   

 

'COMING OUT'

 
I just learned that it was recently Coming Out day (who designates these days and months dedicated to categories of humans?) ao belatedly here's a cover photo of me at 29 in DC in early 1972 when I 'came out' as gay because calling myself bi-sexual would have spared me a lot of the oppression suffered by gay men in The Gay Liberation Front I became active in at the time, when homosexuality was still considered a mental illness and a crime for which you could be locked up, let alone fired, ostracized, belittled, and attacked.

Plus I felt the term bi-sexual implies there's only two kinds of sexual activity and identity when my experience is that every sexually intimate connection is unique, so the possibilities are incalculable. Later on I used the term 'pansexual' and eventually let all labels go (though I love the term 'fluid' for what I feel). I'm grateful I had the chance to be a part of a movement that made much progress as a result of our activism, though tere's still so much to be done. [SAY IT AGAIN tells the story of how I got to that 'coming out' day] 

MY YOUNGEST

Two favorite photos of my youngest child, Flynn, and me goofing when he was around 5 and 23. He just turned 27 and every day makes me grateful and proud. 

KRIS KRISTOFFERSON R.I.P.

 
Not long after I moved to LA in 1982, I was at a Hollywood party getting a fair amount of attention from people there, until Kris Kristofferson walked in and lit up the room with his charisma. I watched as everyone struggled to resist glomming onto him. I was totally envious, til I was introduced to him and found him just as you would expect, a smart, gifted, beautiful person. That was my only close  encounter with him. Condolences to all who knew and admired him.

SON DAY

 Me and my sons several years ago when I could still shave and stand up straight:

DAUGHTER DAY

Daughter Day is every day since late February of 1968 when Caitlin graced my life with hers. Here we are back then, and in early 2019.

STILL MORE RECENT VISITORS

 
Two of my favorite poets and people came up from Jersey and Long Island to hang out with me recently: Stella Kamakaris (to my right) and Maria Serrano. Note my right middle finger, permanently stuck at FU (which for me means bless you) for several years now. The universe feckin' with me no doubt.

J D SOUTHER R.I.P.

 
I spent many days in the 1980s in and around the pool at Carrie Fisher's house in the Hollywood Hills. We were close friends in those years. One afternoon Carrie invited the great singer/songwriter J D Souther to join us. She thought we'd dig each other. I totally dug him and thought he was the coolest person I'd met in Hollywood. I had no idea who he was at the time, or what he thought of me. But over the years that followed, whenever I encountered him, he was always totally warm and mellow with me, and always the coolest person in the room, to me. Deep condolences to his family, friends, and fans.

YES

 
[don't know the source, assume it's legit, but either way it's righteous]

SOME RECENT VISITORS

 

Angels on my shoulders: Jeannie Donohue my right, Sue Brennan my left.

Niece Linda Thompson, me, and my caregiver/housemate/son Miles Lally

Niece Lisa Koch, me (attempting a smile), and caregiver/housemate/son Miles.

TERENCE WINCH'S IT IS AS IF DESIRE

 

IT IS AS IF DESIRE (from Hanging Loose Press), the latest book by (full disclosure) my best friend Terence Winch, is a collection of almost sonnets, ten-line poems written for occasions, like birthdays and anniversaries, with Winch's usual playful ease at manipulating formal guardrails and customary wit and wisdom within them, perhaps more subdued (less flashy) than earlier poetry collections (like last year's THAT SHIP HAS SAILED from U of Pittsburgh Press), but as with all Winch endeavors, that is deceptively challenged by the defiance at the heart of his lists of seemingly mundane daily realities, the defiance of a sensibility refusing to give in to the threats and calamities of twenty-first century life and the inevitable passage of the years of that life. As he writes in the poem "Cabbage & Jam" (note how allowing for the pause at the line breaks adds not only resonance to the seeming obvious meaning but multiple meanings):

Between word and meaning, the land

rolls down beyond the hidden arbor

where the clothesline waits in secret

where the cousins line up for the quiz

 show and Lotto, where I sit by the phone

and computer expecting any minute

to hear from you, somewhere off

the grid, maybe sick, maybe blue,

how should I know? I just need for you

to call me, baby. Is that so hard to do?

AGO

Sixty years ago, on August 8, 1964, I married my first wife, Carol Lee Fisher (who chose to be known thereafter as Lee Lally). We'd only met once before, briefly, but had corresponded for over three years (the story of our wedding can be found in my latest book SAY IT AGAIN). She was 21, I was 22 and halfway through a four year hitch in the military, stationed in Spokane, on the Eastern edge of Washington state.

This photo was taken in '64 on the Western edge of the state, where our friends Roy and Karen Harvey lived on a boat they bought with student loan money. It captures Lee's stylishness then (she made the outfit she's wearing) and our height difference, she was 4'11'', I was 5'11' then. We divorced in the late 1970s and in 1980 she went into a coma after a botched operation which she remained in until her passing in 1986.
 

I think of her revery day.

HETTIE JONES R.I.P.

 
Here's my personal anecdote about poet/writer Hettie Jones. Around 2000 I had recently moved back to the East Coast and ran into Hettie at The Saint Mark's Poetry Project. As too many people know, I can often say the wrong thing to the wrong person at the wrong time. I had just read and loved poet/writer Diane di Prima's memoir Recollections Of My Life As A Woman and was raving about it to everyone I saw, like a small group of poets that included Hettie. 

In 1960, when I was 18, Diane's "Thirteen Nightmares" had a big impact on me, as did she, and I was grateful to eventually consider her a friend. She was an inspiration to me, and I admired the courage of many of her life choices, one of which was to have a child with LeRoi Jones, as he was then known, who also had a huge impact on me back then. At the time LeRoi (later to become Amiri Baraka)  already had two children with his then wife, Hettie.

Hettie's best known book was her own memoir How I Became Hettie Jones, which tells the story of their marriage. I wasn't thinking of any of that as I praised Diane's memoir, though everyone else was so they weren't surprised when Hettie walked away in a huff. In the following years whenever I ran into Hettie, at readings we both were part of, or events for Hanging Loose Press, who published books by us, she was always her dynamic and impressive self while I worried if she was as happy to see me as I was her.

She was admired and beloved by many, including me, and will be sorely missed. Rest In Poetry, Hettie.

[PS: Anyone interested in The Beat era should read both these excellent memoirs.]   

WORTH REPEATING

 

FRIENDS

 
As Beth Boily (standing) wrote in her post: "A fun day yesterday - Mindy Fullilove and I took a ride up to visit with Michael Lally...An entire day of honest sharing of thoughts, fears, hopes, memories and dreams between 3 close friends. It doesn’t get much better than that!" No it doesn't. [photo by my son/housemate/caretaker Miles Lally]

FYI

 LA friends, my son Miles will be playing bass in a reunion with the '90s LA band Spanish Kitchen (AKA Mystery Pop) tomorrow night in your territory, go say hi.

ANOTHER GREAT MEME

 

JOHN MAYALL R.I.P..

John Mayall became one of my favorite music makers the first time I heard his band The Bluesbreakers debut album in 1966. I thought he was the coolest, sexiest, most authentic of all the Brit blues rockers, including all the future stars who passed through his bands and whose talent he mentored and nurtured, like Clapton and Mick Taylor and three of the founding members of Fleetwood Mac.

I loved his later jazz blues fusions and was eternally grateful to be introduced to the awesome talent of violinist Gene "Sugarcane" Harris et al. And after I moved to LA was lucky enough to meet him, through his then wife Maggie (they were together for over 30 years before splitting I believe) who I adored, like everyone else did. 

They lived in one of those houses in the hills that from the street seem to be one story but when you get inside you realize it's hanging from a cliff and goes down two stories with a pool at the bottom and a beam sticking out over the pool a story or two up with a rope at the end of it you could drop into the pool from. Not me!

I remember sitting at a small bar top in the room overlooking the pool, with him behind it, and noticing a silvery sculpture hanging above his haad that seemed to have the tines of a fork sticking out of one spot. I asked him who the sculptor was, and he said a house fire in his Laurel Canyon home a few years before. It was melted silverware. How cool to turn at least one small part of that tragedy into art.

My deepest condolences to his family friends and fans. Rest In Peace John Mayall.

NEW FAVORITE MEME

 

YES

 

HIMSELF

 

My Irish immigrant grandfather "Iron Mike" Lally, at two different stages of his career as a policeman, allegedly the first one in my New Jersey hometown. The story was  that my grandmother got the police doctor to get him an early retirement before he got kicked off the force for hanging in saloons when he was supposed to be on duty. My older relatives in the clan, in the Irish tradition, always referred to him as "himself" as when telling me "Sure if you don't look like himself."

OLD FRIENDS

 
Me and Kale Browne celebrating his 75th birthday and our 41 years of friendship. [photo by Cristi Zea, my shoulder purse made by one of my housemate/caregivers (partner to my son Miles) Hannah Bracken]

GEOFFREY YOUNG'S POETRY

To see why Geoff Young is one of my favorite poets (and people), check out these Youngian sonnets:

https://www.relegationbooks.com/article/five-poems-young/ 

HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAYS

My adult grandchild Deak celebrating at a PRIDE festival recently where they were face painting others and did this to their self: "channeling David Bowie" as they said. Proud of their independence, as I am all my kids and grandkids.

AND AGAIN

 
SAY IT AGAIN An Autobiography In Sonnets, my latest book, came out this year, 2024, and now the year is half over and as far ss I know there haven't been any reviews or even mentions in publications that pay any attention to poetry. But there have been (as pointed out by friends) some amazing reviews on Amazon, for which I am totally grateful.

This book is the result of decades of work and according to some readers is as easy to read as watching a movie. In this case a documentary about how the impact of music, poetry, art, culture, politics, and life experience changed a working-class ethnic wannabe tough guy into an anti-war, civil rights, feminist gay liberation activist.   

If you haven't read it yet, give it a shot. If you have and you enjoyed it, spread the word however you can. Not just for me, but for Beltway Editions, the small press that published it (and may then publish the sequels in the future). And for all the creative souls that pour their hearts and hard work into something hopefully meaningful.

DONALD SUTHERLAND R.I.P.

 
The photo is Donald Sutherland and Karen Allen in ANIMAL HOUSE. The only time I remember meeting him was in 1978 at the party after the premier of that movie where longtime close friend Karen introduced us and we partied for a while. I remember being struck by how tall he was and how much more handsome he was in person than onscreen. 

I already admired his acting, especially in DON'T LOOK NOW, a favorite movie back then. When ORDINARY PEOPLE came out a few years later, I thought his performance in it was one of the most impressive feats in screen acting history. His character transforms so gradually that you have to go back and watch it again to realize how minutely calibrated each of his scenes are to illustrate the changes (and how much more amazing that is for scenes shot out of sequence).

R.I.P. DONALD SUTHERLAND

BELATED

 SAY HEY JUNETEENTH!

FATHERS DAY

Years ago, poet and dear friend Don Yorty filmed me in my then Jersey apartment home reading my poem tribute to my long gone father, called SPORTS HEROES COPS AND LACE. I wanted to repost it here, but my infirmities makes figuring out how to do that and then doing it extremely challenging (I've had to correct my mostly one-finger typing while writing this again and again etc.). It's on Vimeo, if anybody would like to hear it.

MALACHY MCCOURT, JEROME ROTHENBERG, DAVID SHAPIRO,, TOM BOWER R.I.P.

We're halfway through the year, and I haven't marked the passing of some contemporaries (more or less). Partly because it's physically challenging these days (which is why I no longer post daily). First was Malachy McCourt, Frank's brother, who became famous first, as a raconteur bartender and popular guest on THE TONIGHT SHOW getting him backers for his own Manhattan bar, and later acting jobs in movies and on TV. 

Before Frank published his classic memoir ANGELA'S ASHES, I saw them both perform in the original version of that story, each playing multiple roles of the people in their Irish childhood, including women in kerchiefs and shawls, in a church basement to a small audience. Malachy later published his own memoir, A MONK SWIMMING, which came out around the same time as my poetry collection CANT BE WRONG, in the late '90s. We did a reading for the books in a San Francisco bar and restaurant. That's a photo of us with our friend the writer/scholar, and long gone Dan Cassidy (me with Dan on my left and Malachy my right).

Then two poet/scholars I knew passed, Jerome Rothenberg and David Shapiro. Jerome had a great impact on my generation of poets with his anthologies of world poetry focusing on the work of indigenous peoples. His own poetry impactful as well. When my SOUTH ORANGE SONNETS first came out in 1972, he sent me a postcard praising them (in my archives at NYU). He was a kind and gracious person.

David Shapiro had an impact on our generation as well.  We were both Jersey boys, but from such different backgrounds I was sometimes a bit chip--on-my-shoulder confrontational with him. He had the kind of articulate wit I didn't, and early success as a teen in the poetry world where he was admired as a "poet's poet" and in the academic world. But in the end we had much more in common than our home state and poetry (and music, him classical me jazz), including Parkinson's which he suffered from for many years with a kind of acceptance and even nobility which I can only aspire to.

And most recently Tom Bower, an actor I knew and greatly admired, and could fairly be called an "actor's actor" if he hasn't been already. You may not know his name but  you've most likely seen him in a movie or on TV. In my encounters with him, he was always so easy to get along with, both humble and grounded, never arrogant or self-centered as I could often be back in the day. I liked him and hoped he liked me.

May all of the above Rest In Prose, Poetry, Performance, and Peace.

"COLLECTIBLE"

The event on  Saturday went wonderfully. The set up was perfect. Familiar Trees, the venue, is a small one-story building in Great Barrington  with two rooms, one the bookstore and the other an art gallery. The gallery, where the musicians and me were set up, has a garage door which was open so the audience mostly sitting outside could see us.

There was a great sound system including a great mic for me with a monitor in front of me so I could hear myself clearly and see by the audience's reactions that they were understanding what I was saying. In the over six decades I've been reading my poetry to audiences my usual m.o. is to bring a ton of poems and decide what I'll read as I'm reading, depending on the audience reactions.

Butt I can't handle books or stacks of paper very well anymore plus my uncontrollable drooling makes a mess of a book's pages or smudges the ink on paper copies. So my son Miles helped me pick the poems and printed them out in big type and put the pages in transparent plastic sleeves, which it turned out were easier for me to turn in the looseleaf binder he put them in.

He (on electric bass) and Brian Kantor (drums) were set up behind me and Wes Buckley (on guitar) off to my left, so I had nothing to distract me between me and the listeners, which included my other two kids, Caitlin and Flynn, in the first row cheering me on. After I opened with a relatively recent poem ("I Meant To") the musicians joined in, fabulously improvising until the last line of the last poem.

 We got a standing o and everyone, old friends new friends and future friends, seemed to have enjoyed it. Turns out it was recorded and there's even some iPhone video, which I will post when it becomes available. Though I think you had to be there to get the full impact. There were several extravagant compliments thrown around, but the best one may have been: "Now that was a collectible".

FYI

Overwhelmed with gratitude for all your birthday wishes. Meanwhile, if you're in the Berkshires this Saturday (I'm guessing my last in person poetry reading cause it's just becoming tooo difficult):

DREAM HEADLINE

 Newspaper headline in a dream last night:

7 INCHES OF SNOW EXPECTED IN BURBANK

MORE MEMORIES

 
There're no photos of my mother (the class of the clan who I adored) and me without one or more of my siblings around. Here's a good example c. 1954. Me in Hawaiin shirt with my three brothers to my right, Franciscan friar Father Campion (Tommy) behind our mother, music teacher Buddy (James), his wife Catherine with their baby Cathy down in front, and cop Robert, leaning over his wife Sis (Marie).

In front of me is my Grandma Dempsey, my mother's mother who lived with us, and my sisters Irene and Joan (with pixie haircut), our dad sitting on the arm of our couch. I grew up in a crowd. 

JUNE 1ST EVENT

 i don’t do poetry readings in person any more

or even go to them or other public events,

there’s too many challenges, physical (weak voice

and tightening jaw, muddling pronunciation,

urgent unexpected needs, etc.) and mental

(anxiety, confusion etc.) from parkinson’s

and that 2009 brain operation for the tapeworm

that got into my brain and died and they had to

go in and cut out (which I never explicitly named

to not put that image in my youngest’s child’s

and grandchildren’s heads, or other loved ones,

but now, with the kennedy revelation it’s in

everyone’s heads, so i can name it)

but

i was asked to take part in an event with my oldest son Miles

so

I’ll be doing my best to read some poetry of mine

(and  to make it more of a challenge)

with improvised music by Sound For

(featuring Wes Buckley, Brian Kantor, and Miles Lally)

Saturday June 1st at 5pm

at

Familiar Trees 

80 Railroad St.

Great Barrington, MA

01230

if you’re in or around the berkshires then

i’d love to see you there

MEMORIES

 
The way members of my clan watched our new thirteen inch black-and-white TV when I was a kid. That's me in front, my sister Joan behind me, my next door cousin Marylynn in white with our down-the-street cousin Micki behind her, and our next town (Orange) cousin Rosemary behind Micki, and on the couch my mom and Aunt Rose, a widowed single parent to Rosemary (Rose had a day job so Rosemary spent most of her time with us), and my brother Robert. There's also my mother's mother who lived with us and more siblings and cousins out of frame.

PAUL AUSTER R.I.P.

 

We met in 1970s NYC, and discovered we grew up in the same town in Jersey but on different sides of it, and at slightly different times (he's five years younger). Despite my sometimes arrogant persona, he seemed always friendly and tolerant and a little amused by my relentless attempts to share the truth I thought only I could decipher.

I liked him, his writing, and like everyone else, his sexy smokey eyes. My favorite book is his INVENTION OF SOLITUDE, maybe because he writes about the town that made us homeboys of sorts, but with two distinctly different perspectives. Grateful to have known him. Condolences to his family, friends, and many fans.

BREATH CONTROL 12/80

So grateful that John Newt sent me this recording of me in my prime (1980, at 38) reading some of my poems and a story, demonstrating the breath control I learned from studying Frank Sinatra's and John Coltrane's techniques. 

<iframe src="https://archive.org/embed/mma222-01" width="500" height="60" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen="true" mozallowfullscreen="true" allowfullscreen></iframe>

[archiveorg mma222-01 width=640 height=60 frameborder=0 webkitallowfullscreen=true mozallowfullscreen=true]

HERITAGE UPDATE

My maternal grandfather, Tom Dempsey, died when I was a little boy, but I remember him. I knew he was known as "the silver thrush" for his singing and that he had owned a tavern in Newark where he and my grandma Dempsey lived until she was widowed and moved in with us. 

But I never realized he was actually a vaudeville headliner back in the 1800s until my niece Lisa shared scrapbooks handed down to her mother, my sister Irene, and I saw these programs. What a delight to now picture my grandfather when watching classic movies with vaudeville scenes, like YANKEE DOODLE DANDY or GYPSY et al.

TIME TRIPPING

 
This photo, shared recently by poet friend Greg Masters, I think is from a display of Dennis Cooper's Little Caesar Press archives at NYU, back in the 2000s. NYU also houses my archives, but fortunately I found a copy of this Little Caesar magazine #11 from 1980, on my bookshelves.

The cover photo is by early SNL photographer and friend, Edie Baskin, and inside part of the contents are two interviews Tim Dlugos did with me, one extended daytime session and a shorter one in his car at night riding back to Manhattan from a poetry reading we'd done (with Kevin Killian) on Long Island. 

We were stoned  for the latter and I probably was for the daytime one too. I hadn't read it since the mag came out over forty years ago and felt like a visitor from a distant planet, trying to decipher meanings and tone and intentions and pretensions and self awareness and self indulgence.

Made me miss Tim more than ever. Those were the days. As are these.

ME AND MY SIBS

 
Another photo of me and my siblings during World War Two. Back row, left to right, Buddy, Tommy holding me, Robert; front row, Irene and Joan. They're all gone now, but what an impact they had on me as a boy.

JOHN SINCLAIR R.I.P.

I first encountered the poet John Sinclair in 1965 through the mail while I was still in the military stationed outside Spokane, Washington. I wrote in my latest book, SAY IT AGAIN (#76 in The Spokane Sonnets), "John Sinclair, editor of a Detroit little mag, rejects / some poems I submit but writes: Who are you? / I reply angrily I’m the writing you rejected."

I didn't know at the time he was my age, 23, but as we both became anti Vietnam war activists in the years that followed I admired his attempt to  bring the rock-n-roll world we grew up in into the anti-war movement. I organized some anti-war rock shows in DC, but he managed the MC5 and co-founded The White Panthers as allies to The Black Panthers, and fought for legalizing marijuana.

He got a ten year prison sentence for sharing two joints with an undercover cop in 1969, and the campaign to free him succeeded in '71. I finally met him in person shortly after when we did a poetry reading together and he was sweet and supportive. A 'sixties icon. Rest In Poetry brother.

 

EASTER 1944

 
My siblings and me (another one, between me and my closest sister, died as an infant thus the bigger step down to me) on Easter 1944 during WWII. Me soon to be two, and my two oldest brothers joining the military before the war ended. All gone now, except for me.

MARJORIE PERLOFF R.I.P.

 
Marjorie Perloff was an unparalleled scholar and interpreter of the avant-garde in the arts of the 20th century, especially poetry. I first encountered her in my DC days of the early 1970s. I take pride in her championing my early poetry book ROCKY DIES YELLOW and the poetry anthology I edited NONE OF THE ABOVE, praising my most notorious poem then, "My Life", in The Washington Post.

She was more critical of my later work and we had other differences of opinion, which I arrogantly gave her shit about when we both lived in L.A. in the '80s and "90s and I went to her home there. The thing I appreciated most about Marjorie was the twinkle in her eye when she gave me shit back.

She was an extraordinary person, someone to learn about for women's history month, which is every month for me, just like black history month and poetry month and pride month etc. 

[And if you're wondering, my blog obits are about my take on my personal connection to the subjects, the facts of their lives otherwise available online.]  

WORLD POETRY DAY

 

HAPPY SAINT PADDY'S

Here's my top five favorite Irish films in chronological order based on the era they're set in:

BLACK 47

THE WIND THAT SHAKES THE BARLEY

THE SECRET OF ROAN INISH

THE COMMITMENTS

ONCE

AMEN

 

A T'OUSAND T'ANKS

 
Don't know if you noticed, but at the end of Cillian Murphy's Best Actor Oscar acceptance speech, he spoke in the Irish language to say: A thousand thank you's ("Go raibh mile maith agat"). My dear friend Terence Winch pointed out that's probably the first time the Irish language was spoken at an Oscar awards show.

The Irish were one of the first peoples colonized and occupied (still, partially) and subjected to genocide (including the misnamed "famine") and penalized (for close to a thousand years) by the English for just being who they are, which included almost totally eliminating their language. So whatever your thoughts on nationalism are, I felt in that moment like what Murphy described himself as a little earlier in his speech: "A proud Irishman" (even if just from growing up with Irish immigrant grandparents).

2024 MOVIE AWARDS

I haven't seen all the movies up for awards this season, but here's my reactions to what I've seen so far.

AMERICAN FICTION. Most original and satisfying movie of, and my pick for best flick of, 2023. (I've read critics saying it doesn't live up to the book. I haven't read the book but found this stinging satire seriously clever and witty, in the best historic sense of those words.)

PAST LIVES. Another unexpectedly unique story, subtly compelling and impactful. My choice for best director and original screenplay, both by Celine Song. 

THE HOLDOVERS. A story we've seen variations of before maybe, but so well done on every level it shines like the gem it is. Including the acting, especially Da'Vine Joy Randolph, my choice for best supporting actor of 2023.

KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON. Epic filmmaking at it's best, and redemption for Scorcese with me after the catastrophe of THE IRISHMAN (so-called). Though I would have preferred spending all that time with the Osage characters (especially Lily Gladstonee who I hope gets the Oscar) and following the story completely from their perspective, rather than focusing so much time and energy on the perspective of the white men and their evil. But at least Scorcese was able to keep DiNiro mostly in character with only a few inappropriate DiNiroisms. 

OPPENHEIMER. Another epic film expertly done (by Christopher Nolan). My pick for best cinematography (Hoyte van Hoytema). And so many great performances (Robert Downey Jr. my pick for the still binary Oscar for presents-as-male best supporting actor). Cillian Murphy impressive as always.

BARBIE. Greta Gerwig should have been Oscar nominated for pulling this product promotion satire off at all, let alone so stylishly. And Margot Robbie is, as always, the main reason to watch any film she's in. Some laughs and poignancy. Best costumes and production design.

NYAD. In almost any other year this would win multiple Oscars. Especially for best actor and supporting actor for Annette Bening and Jody Foster. Watching them play off each other is a master (air quotes) class in film acting. Unexpectedly engaging despite it being a lot of watching someone swim.

MAESTRO. Bradley Cooper should win a special award for best multi-tasker (directing starring co-writing co-producing). I thought he did a pretty great job, considering all the possible (and real) pitfalls. Again in almost any other year this would win a bunch of Oscars.

POOR THING. Starts out unappealingly, for me, trying too hard at calling attention to its artistic credentials, but Emma Stone is so spectacular in her performance I stuck it out to experience a lot of satisfying scenes. There are so many amazing performances in the best "actress" category this year, they all should win.

RUSTIN. Bio-pics are always full of challenges (as part of the story, and of the film making), and this one doesn't surmount them all. But Coleman Domingo is so good as the title historic character, he transcends the genre liabilities. In the binary Oscar world he's my choice for "best actor". 

THE COLOR PURPLE. Some amazing scenes and performances, but didn't have the impact my friends who saw it on Broadway said that rendition did. Coleman Domingo displays his incredible range, as do many others, but for me the lyrics were sometimes too thin for the otherwise energetic production  numbers, and the movement of the story seemed off at times. Still an intense experience.  

INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY. Surprisingly not bad for this late in the game.  And worth watching to see my longtime friend Karen Allen, as Marion Ravenwood, elevate the climactic scene to a level that complements while even surpassing Marion's first appearance on screen in RAIDERS. A very satisfying full circle.

AMERICAN SYMPHONY. I haven't seen the nominated documentaries, but my fave doc of '23 that I have seen is this one. Highly recommend.

REUBEN JACKSON R.I.P.

I left DC in 1975, before I could get to know Reuben, but I knew of him in later years, and we've been Facebook friends for awhile. He was a beloved figure in the DC and wider poetry community, and will be sorely missed. To understand a little why, please read this terrific tribute to him. Rest In Poetry Reuben.

WASHINGTONCITYPAPER.COM

When the Music Stopped: Remembering Reuben Jackson

“He was jazz,” says author Kwame Alexander of poet and jazz scholar Reuben Jackson, who died on Feb. 16. He leaves behind a legacy.