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.