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).

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)

TRANS RIGHTS

 
I have had trans friends since childhood, and trans lovers since my late twenties, as well as times when I felt transgender identification of my own, and I have an adult trans grandchild, so I have little to no tolerance for any judgment or criticism or discrimination against trans people or limitations on what they feel is best for their health, happiness, and well being. 

As a wise person said to me more than once: There's two kinds of business, mine and none of mine. And what a trans person feels is best for them is none of mine. The current scapegoating of trans people for political advantage used by the trolls in charge must be opposed by all freedom loving people, or just plain loving people.

TBTRIP

That's me in the flowery shirt, my three brothers to my right, Tommy (by then a Franciscan friar renamed Campion), Jimmy (known in the family as Buddy), and William (called by his middle name Robert). In front of me sit my mother Irene (ne Dempsey), and her mother (my widowed grandma Dempsey who lived with us), and down front (from my right) Robert's wife (ne Marie Fennessy known to all as Sis), Buddy's wife Catherine (ne Audia) with their baby Cathy on her lap, my sisters Joan and Irene, and our father (Jimmy). All gone now except for me.

AGAIN AND AGAIN

 
[I think they mean 'unknown']

2024

Not to beat a dead horse, as they used to say when I was a kid about futile actions, but given my present physical and mental limitations, listing all the great things that happened last year, including the publication of many fine books by friends I love, is too challenging, so I'll toot my own horn one last time about the new book of mine published by Beltway Editions in 2024, and express my gratitude to those who noted it by giving it rave reviews on amazon, an entity I oppose but nonetheless the only place I know of where SAY IT AGAIN:An Autobiography In Sonnets was noticed.

 

SEASONS GREEATINGS

 

JOHN "ROD" LALLY R.I.P.

I've known him always as my cousin Rod who was a few years older than me and grew up next door on a street with three houses of cousins and our Irish immigrant grandparents so was known locally as Lally's Alley. We spent so much time in each others houses the cousins on my street felt more like siblings and Rod was the big brother (my actual big brothers were in their teens when I was born).

Rod was my hero when we were kids . He was so cool in the early 1950s in his black leather jacket (I saw  photos of him in it at one of our Lally clan reunions but haven't seen them since), and when he got stabbed in a fight at a drugstore soda fountain and refused to tell the cops who did it (and we had cops in the clan) and had his arm in a sling for a while,

And then he got kicked out of high school for something you wouldn't today and he and his girlfriend Paula got married and he went to work at the A&P at the bottom of our street and eventually moved further South in Jersey where they had a bunch of kids and a wonderful life until Paula passed and then he met Cathy and continued to have a wonderful life.

As has been said by those who were closest to him, like his son Richard, for Rod the glass was always 3/4 full. Thank you for being an exemplar of joy and for always making me feel loved Rod. 

[photos of Rod with his actual siblings and with his widow Cathy, deepest condolences to you all and to Rod's kids and grandkids and great grandkids.]

HAPPY HOLIDAAYS

 

THANKS

 
Some of the Lally clan that made my Thanksgiving so full of laughter and love (from viewer's left to right behind me): my grandkids Donovan Lally and Deak Hotaling, my youngest Flynn Lally, my niece Michelle Lally Doyle and her husband Mike Doyle, my oldest Caitlin Lally Hotaling and her husband Ed Hotaling. As always, I feel like the luckiest person in the world.

[my son Miles and his partner Hannah, who are my housemates and caregivers, were at Hannah's family gathering]

COOL

My eldest, Caitlin, being featured in a promotional post for the hardware store she works at. Her grandfather, James Lally, co-owned hardware stores during his lifetime, up until my boyhood, so it's in our blood. Proud of her, as I always am of my kids and grandkids. 

LOVE, JOE

 

I haven't posted much since the election, mostly because I feel like anything I say comes from such a place of privilege(s) that other voices should take precedent, but I also think all our voices should take part in shaping some solutions, so here's mine:

On the day after the election I got this in the mail, LOVE, JOE: The Selected Letters of Joe Brainard, who, for those who don't know, was a uniquely original artist/writer/poet/collaborator and also one of the loves, and lovers, of my life. It helped my mood immensely.

Ever since I was a child in the 1940s, during and after WWII, I have found my solace in the arts, where the creative endeavors of others, as well as my own, have found ways to open my heart to the infinite possibilities of life. Everything Joe Brainard created, did that for me. And still does.

I remember (the title of Joe's autobiographical masterpiece) the thrill of seeing an envelope in the mail with Joe's distinct all caps lettering (see the cover of the book). His sometimes rambling thoughts and observations and enclosed drawings or magazine photos (and in the case of me and a few others, his sexual fantasies (I know, you're shocked)) always seemed like rare treats to me.

Daniel Kane has done a fantastic job of editing, choosing to group letters by addressee chronologically, so that you get the scope of each relationship amid echoes of events and gossip, which is like a full immersion into Joe's life and work and world (and wisdom), and his triumphs and struggles with it all.

Not everyone's "cup of tea" (as Joe might put it, i.e. in quotes), but if you already love Joe's work (if unfamiliar, read I REMEMBER) I think you'll love LOVE, JOE. And for me, love is always the answer.

VETERANS DAY

 

Me and my buddy, Murph, in basic training at Lackland Air Force Base, outside San Antonio, Texas, in February or March of 1962. I was 19. To read about my adventures, get my most recent book: SAY IT  AGAIN.

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.

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.