GRATITUDE

 

This one turned twenty-nine yesterday. A miracle. 

9/11 REDUX

 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).

GRATEFUL

Recent instagram post from longtime friend Alec Baldwin on my poetry collection Another Way To Play. If  you read his comment, it's a poem in itself, an ode to poetry, in this case mine, for which I am humbly grateful.

DAVE MORICE R.I.P.

 

Poet and wordplay genius Dave Morice was a one of a kind, and one kind, person. He arrived in Iowa City (where he became an iconic presence) in 1969, as I was leaving, so except for a few visits over the years, we mostly knew each other through correspondence and poetry.

 Look him  up to see how unique he and his work were, which I am grateful to have been a small part of (e.g. his poetry comics, where he illustrated lines of classic and contemporary poetry).

I just want to say as a person who always thought I was the smartest in whatever room I was in when I was younger (from childhood to my fifties!) and sought out people who thought they were, I could be challenging, but I never felt judged or unappreciated by him. I suspect everyone who knew him would say the same.

Rest In Poetry, Dave.

GOOD POINT

 

HARRY E. NORTHUP'S TO ASK FOR LOVE

When I finished reading poet/actor/friend Harry Northup's latest collection of poetry, To Ask For Love, I thought this is the greatest book of love poems ever written (including my own Just Let Me Do It).

What I meant was that To Ask For Love moved me more than any book of love poems I've ever read. 

DALE HERD R.I.P.

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]

[Not sure when this photo of Dale and me was taken but looks like at poetry reading I did at Beyond Baroque in Venice Beach CA in the early 2000s] 

MOTHER'S DAY 2026 [with my favorite photo of my mother in the 1920s]

 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

PARKINSON'S AWARENESS MONTH AND POETRY MONTH (every month to me)

 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)

OLD FRIENDS

 

Two of my closest friends for over fifty years came to visit. Karen Allen who lives nearby so visits regularly and Terence Winch who lives in DC where we all first met and hasn't been here in over three years but I talk to on the phone at least weekly. My lap is covered by a hand towel and a paper towel to deal with my unpredictable and uncontrollable drooling, and I'm not giving the finger, that finger is just usually inadvertently stiff (from arthritis and Parkinson's related dystonia), both of which (the drooling and stiff middle finger) seem appropriately poetic justice for me .

MARY BETH HURT R.I.P.

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. 

IN AWE OF STILL

Fifty-eight years ago I was awestruck by the miracle of Caitlin's (my first born child) presence in my life and the deep and immediate connection we had. This is only days after her birth in Iowa City, where I was in graduate school.

Me and Cait in the 1970s in the kitchen of the feminist commune in DC where she lived with her mother and other women for a few years.

Cait in the 1980s in high school in Santa Monica where she and her brother lived with me after we had lived in NYC for several years. 

Me and Cait in the '90s I think, (I meant to find photos for the next two decades too but my parkinson's keeps thwarting that for now).

CHOOSE LOVE NOT FEAR

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.  

NEW LIST

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

TINA DARRAGH R.I.P.

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.

AIDS DAY

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

NOVEMBER SONNET

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]

PENELOPE MILFORD R.I.P.

 

Penny and I got married on Valentine's Day 1982, about six months after we met. I had gone to see another actor in the play FISHING and afterwards our eyes, Penny's and mine, connected and that was that. It was a brief, passionate, volatile marriage, long ago.

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)

BEERRY BERENSON R.I.P. 9/11

 

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).

BEST AMERICAN POETRY 2025

 

Poetry of mine in this just released latest "Best" for 2025. Grateful to be included.