What I meant was that To Ask For Love moved me more than any book of love poems I've ever read.
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]
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
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)
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.
Recently my twenty-three-year-old trans grandchild, Deak, had top surgery, and I’ve never seen them happier or more at ease in their body and the world.
We are fortunate to live in a part of the country where there are doctors and medical institutions that support transitioning people, though there are still plenty who don’t even here.
How sad to be so frightened by another human’s finding their joy and comfort in life that you would advocate for preventing just that. Yay for my grandchild and others who are finding their happiness for themselves.
I watched LAST CHRISTMAS with my daughter the other night and dug it even more this time, my new favorite Xmas movie. Woke up the next morning with a new list forming in my head. Surprisingly it wasn’t ten favorite Christmas movies but ten favorite (at one time) movies whose titles begin with the word “last” (or “the last”). Some, like THE LAST OF SHIELA can be very cringey, (John Ashbery recommended it to me back in the day, because it was written by Tony Perkins and Stephen Sondheim) or have lost their luster. So for what it's worth, here ’tis:
LAST CHRISTMAS
THE LAST DETAIL
THE LAST EMPEROR
LAST EXIT TO BROOKLYN
THE LAST HURRAH
THE LAST OF SHIELA
THE LAST PICTURE SHOW
THE LAST SHOWGIRL
THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS
THE LAST WALTZ
Too many deaths (as always) to comprehend, but wanted to mark the recent passing of poet Tina Darragh. I met her when I started teaching (Modern Lit, Creative Writing etc.) at Trinity College (now University) in the Fall of 1969 in DC, where she was an undergraduate and one of my students. At the time, she was the head of the Young Republicans on campus, but soon moved away from that choice.
Tina reminded me of some of my first generation Irish-American aunts, so I treated her like family. One of my favorite poets at that moment was Francis Ponge and Tina and I got deep into his unique approach to prose poetry (admittedly in English translations from the French). She also helped me and my then wife Lee Lally, and Terence Winch and a few other poets, start a weekly open poetry series, Mass Transit, and Some Of Us Press to publish slim volumes of poetry (chapbooks) by local poets we all agreed on.
She lived for a while in the commune my household turned into, (while she worked as a waitress in a nearby Toddle House) and was a great supporter when I came out as gay (identifying as bi-sexual seeming like a cop-out) and Trinity "let me go." She organized a school-wide strike, but I talked her and others out of it, deciding it was time to move on anyway. She also helped me organize a protest calling for statues of politicians and military men all over DC to be replaced by statues of poets and writers and artists etc. like Gertrude Stein and Billie Holiday.
She had a small press for a while called Dry Imager, and published a side-stapled xeroxed collage art and poetry double book by her (called My First Play, if I remember correctly) and me (called Malenkov Takes Over). She is recognized (but not enough) as one of the pioneers of the "Language Poetry" movement, but her work transcended any categories. She and her creative output were unique.
She remained in the DC area while I moved around the country, but whenever I saw her over the years, I felt the connection we had from the beginning of our friendship and hope she did too.
Condolences to her husband and son and all her family, friends, and fans.
i lost a lot of dear close friends as well as ex-lovers to AIDS, and don't know why it missed me, but that's my personal and all of our international history, and these jokers trying to erase that history can try all they want but will always fail cause you and me aint gonna forget or shut up about it
On a perfectly clear Fall day, heading back to
Fort Monmouth, I watched as other cars on
The Garden State Parkway veered onto the
shoulder and stopped, the drivers not getting
out, just sitting there. At the toll booth the man
said The president's been shot. As I drove on,
more cars pulled off the road. I could see their
drivers weeping. Back in the barracks we stayed
in the rec room watching the black and white
TV, tension in the room like static. When they
named Lee Harvey Oswald, I watched the
black guys hold their breath, hoping that meant
redneck, not spade, and every muscle in their
faces relax when he turned out to be white.
[(C) 2018 Michael Lally from Another Way To Play]
What I'll remember most: her vivacious smile, her magnificent acting, her rambunctiousness, her stubbornness, and her (maybe too often misdirected) willingness to speak truth to power, including mine. Rest In peace and Power kid.
(wedding invitation by Joe Brainard)
Berry Berenson was a friend to me in my early years in Hollywood. She was married to the movie star Tony Perkins at the time and until his death in 1992. They seemed really loving to each other and I admired their relationship. And I admired her.
Though she was often noted more as Perkin's wife or as model/actress Marisa Berenson's sister, Berry was a wonderful actor in her own right (see REMEMBER MY NAME). But despite her fame-for-whatever-reason, at least around me she was always the least pretentious or self-centered person I ever met anywhere.
She came to a play I was in early on in L.A, Landford Wilson's BALM IN GILEAD, and after the performance stuck around to talk to me. One of the things she said to me that night was that she had only seen one other person in her life who had the kind of glow, I think that was the word she used, that I had, and that was Marilyn Monroe!
She was wonderful on screen and off, either in front of the camera or behind it (she was a great photographer), and I only wish, as I too often do with many friends, that I had made more of an effort to see her more often. Especially after I heard the news that she had been on one of the two planes that crashed into The World Trade Center towers on 9/11.
I knew some others who went down with the towers on that tragic day, like Father Mike Judge, but Berry is the one I think of most often. As I later wrote in a poem ("March 18, 2003"), she was:
"a woman who was kind to me when
she didn't need to be[...]
How many people have died
before you got the chance to tell them what you meant to?"
R.I.P. to all those we lost on that horrific day (and those we continue to lose).
When I showed up at the hair & makeup trailer, Loni was already being worked on and after being introduced we ran our few lines and then chatted while people buzzed around her. Then a youngish man burst in and began yelling about her being late to the set and holding up filming. It was around 8AM and she had already mentioned that she'd been there since 6AM, but the man didn't care.
Sometimes in situations like that, where a woman was being berated, I'd ask them "You want me to knock him out?" and the guys would back off, because they weren''t ready or willing to "throw some hands" as we called it when I was a kid (and I knew that of course, I wasn't that brave), but before I could she apologized and disarmed him, and me, with her humble and seemingly genuine sincerity.
The scene I was in took place on a sidewalk under scaffolding. When they called for our stand ins so the lighting could be set, Loni told hers to take her seat and she'd do the tedious standing in place while lights and reflectors were arranged and rearranged. This was the first time I'd had a stand in (the two indie horror movies I'd starred in didn't have them) so I followed Loni's lead and told mine to take my seat while I stood with Loni.
The lighting guy was up on a ladder looking down at us, focused on Loni, and she was talking to him like they were old friends as she began asking about the wattage or something technical and I listened as she very sweetly and humbly asked questions seemingly innocently that got him to change his choices to what she was nudging him toward.
I was so impressed that she not only knew what these technicians were doing and what with, but that she used all her glamour plus her one-of-the-gang camaraderie, to influence how the camera would capture her. Just the amount of work she did to make this one little scene work for her was beyond what I was willing to expend. And during all this she was also joking with me, charming me, and deflecting my attempts at flirting like a seasoned hockey goalie deflecting pucks.
I admired her ever after, and still do. My condolences to all her family, friends, and fans.
EDMUND WHITE R.I.P.
Ed and I were friends in 1970s NYC. He lived uptown and me downtown, with Miles, my 5-year-old child who I was single-parenting, and Ana, my Costa Rican girlfriend. We had dinner at his place and mine a few times and met for lunch in midtown often during the two years when I had the only 9-to-5 job I ever had, as a writer and editor at The Franklin Library. I didn't know what I was doing half the time so he'd coach me.
He had published one novel, Forgetting Elena, that impressed me with its accessible if coded elegance in exploring being a closeted gay man without saying it. I had already published explicitly gay, sometimes graphically sexual, poems and short prose pieces so was able to return the favor as he began publishing openly gay books.
He was one of the smartest people I knew and often one of the wittiest. He could be tough minded and caustic too, and though I don't remember what exactly happened, our relationship became strained and then I moved to LA. I'm not great at staying in touch, even though people I love remain in my heart, so I didn't see him much, but I continued to hear his voice and unique way of expressing himself in my head, and still do. I wish I had sent him my love more recently, so for what it's worth I'm sending it now.
JOHN MARTIN R.I.P.
In the late 1960s, John Martin, who I never met in person, started Black Sparrow Press to publish books by Charles Bukowski, and in doing so make Bukowski famous. Known as a "small press," Black Sparrow rivaled the big book publishers thanks to Bukowski's popularity and continued sales, as John added other poets and writers to his roster,
In the 1970s I was supposed to be one too as I garnered some alternative notoriety for my own poetry (one little mag critic included me and Bukowski in what he called "The Raw Meat School of Poetry"). But when John said my book would have to wait a year or more I became impatient and arrogantly demanded it go to press sooner, and John, instead, dropped it altogether.
In the late 1990s I sent a manuscript of prose and poetry to poet/publisher friend Geoff Young and he suggested I send it to Black Sparrow. I explained how I'd burnt that bridge back in the '70s, but Goff said I should do it anyway and let John know I wasn't that arrogant person anymore.
So I did, and John quickly got back to me saying he wanted to publish it. As we got close to going to press, I started having some regrets and wanted to change some of it, but John told me he got sent thousands of manuscripts every year and had chosen mine and a few others because he loved the writing and said not to change a thing, so I didn't. That book, IT'S NOT NOSTALGIA, was followed by another, IT TAKES ONE TO KNOW ONE, and a third was in the works when John's health led him to sell the press.
John was the most gracious and responsive publisher you could want. Despite all the demands on his time and focus, he always answered my letters and calls promptly and patiently, always giving me and my writing his full attention. I was lucky to have had him as one of my publishers.
DONNA BROOK R.I.P.
[I couldn't find a photo of Donna]
Donna was a poet friend since the 1960s, and we saw each other at readings and over dinner and lunches for years, especially after she married the late Bob Hershon, a poet friend I knew even longer. She wass feisty and fun to spar with. I always enjoyed our sometimes intense political and literary discussions and debates.
Her health was often a challenge she faced courageously, and I'm happy she's free of that struggle. The best way to commemorate her is with one of her poems:
During my Joe McCarthy childhood I was warned to "Never repeat what you hear in this house," but I didn't know which parts of what were secrets. At home I was told to be proud of friends going to jail, at school I learned prisons are for criminals. The Pledge of Allegiance was so hard to say because I'm left-handed and got my sides mixed up. At age three I realized SP was salt and pepper but I never figured out what CP meant. Still I vividly remember a man who had been with Trotsky in Mexico grabbing my brother by the ears and lifting him three feet off the ground. He brought him straight up in the air saying "Jesus, you're a carbon copy of your father. You poor bastard, you look just like him."
From Present Tense: Poets in the World, edited by Mark Pawlak. Copyright © 2004 by Donna Brook. Reprinted by permission of Hanging Loose Press. All rights reserved.
In March of 1972, when I was 29, after my first sexual experience with a man, at a time when by law that was still a crime and by the medical profession still considered a mental disease, I publicly "came out" as a Gay man and lost friends, extended family members, and eventually my job (teaching at a Catholic women's college!) and in some circles my reputation. And caused a lot of confusion for many folks, including myself.
Because I was still attracted to women too, and in a relationship with my then wife, (see my last book SAY IT AGAIN). I chose to come out as "Gay" rather than "Bi" to express solidarity with Gay comrades by facing the consequences of being openly identified that way. Also, I didn't like the term "bi-sexual" which to me sounded like there were only two kinds of sexual relations and I knew that wasn't true.
I took part in some of the earliest Pride marches and demonstrations, sometimes in a dress or what we called gender-bending garb (lumberjack shirt with clip-on rhinestone earrings e.g.) and took flack not only from homophobes but some people within the Gay Liberation Movement who considered me not authentically gay. Then I got custody of one of my children, a five-year old, and the possibility of losing him because I was identifying as Gay, led me to be more discreet in showing my femme side and eventually let people assume what they would.
But I never stopped being proud of my Gay Liberation activism history or my love of, and place in, the ongoing expansion of who is part of the LGBTQ+ community.
couldn't ask for a more insightful understanding of what i intended with this work and the effort that went into creating it:
https://periodicityjournal.blogspot.com/2025/06/jerome-sala-getting-it-right-michael.html?fbclid=IwY2xjawK1S3VleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBicmlkETE1SWc0dkZlTHhNbTBFVW81AR6Ml7TM_e2b-u3iKSTQXPFCcpTTkoc9kLRLnUmriq0fSlr0ZLM9xDlS6YZ_WQ_aem_C7Z_F_Y_ppTrCXDIEDdjBw
A BELATED THANX TO ALL WHO SENT ME BIRTHDAY GREETINGS, TRYING TO RESPOND TO EACH INDIVIDUALLY BUT IT MAY TAKE MANY MORE WEEKS OR EVEN MONTHS THUS THIS POST, LOVE YOU ALL
