NYSP :: IOU is a series devoted to exploring a single question: How has the New York School of Poetry (NYSP)—its aesthetics and shenanigans—influenced contemporary poetics?
Michael Lally
This month, we are having a chat with poet Michael Lally, whose most recent book, Say It Again – An Autobiography in Sonnets, chronicles the first 30 years of his peripatetic life and literary career across 450 sonnets. Lally, who’s also a jazz pianist, former actor, and political activist, has said of his work, “My goal has been to talk to the kid I was when I was 14, 15, 16—before I had any education, before I had read anything that sophisticated but still knew certain things in my heart.”
DB: When I was re-reading parts of Say It Again this morning, that line from Wordsworth popped into my head—"the spontaneous overflowing of powerful feeling recollected in tranquility…”
ML: I think that could be said to be true for a lot of it, but certainly a good portion was not in tranquility! (Laughter)
DB: You’ve said that you encountered works by the New York poetry set fairly early on in your career.
ML: I was writing poetry and reading it from a pretty early age. So I noticed the New York scene probably through the anthologies, like Donald Allen's New American Poetry in 1960. But at that point, I was mostly impacted by the so-called Beats. In 1964, when Frank O’Hara‘s Lunch Poems came out, I was in the middle of a four-year hitch in the Air Force, hanging out at a friend's place outside of Spokane, Washington, where I was stationed. He had a copy of Lunch Poems, so I picked it up and read it.
First of all, I was totally taken by the tone, the voice, the surprising honesty of attitudes and perspectives, while at the same time being put off by what I at that time took as the elitism of French expressions and French books and et cetera. So, I had this attraction resistance.
Later, around 1966, when I went to the Iowa Writers’ Workshop on the GI Bill, a poet friend, Ray DiPalma, gave me a book of John Ashbery's. I think it was probably The Tennis Court Oath. I remember reading it and being impressed with the technique, the technical craftsmanship, but being again put off by, in this case, what I took as a kind of coldness, lack of emotional connection, which is what I was interested in at the time and usually still am. So my initial response to these poets I was aware of was, you know, being attracted to some things and put off by others.
DB: Did you find your attitudes shifting over time?
ML: Sure. Around 1970, I was teaching a class in a Catholic women's college in D.C. on O'Hara, explaining the technical brilliance of his poems, “The Day Lady Died” and “A Step Away from Them.” Suddenly, I got tears in my eyes. I was experiencing this visceral connection to O'Hara, who was by then dead! I was totally overwhelmed and taken by surprise by this emotional response to his poems and to his presence in my heart, as opposed to just my brain. From then on, throughout the 70s in particular, and really even still, some if not a lot of my poetry has been really a dialogue with Frank, or an attempt to get his attention!
With Ashbery, I heard him read one night in 1973 at a poetry event at the Smithsonian in Washington. There were six poets reading over three evenings. I was on the bill with Lucille Clifton on another night. Although I had grown to like John’s poetry more, I still had this attitude about his work.
During his reading, he performed “Farm Implements and Rutabagas In a Landscape.” And I suddenly got Ashbery, I got Ashbery! I was a jazz musician and I realized, oh, don't listen to the words for their emotional content and linear connection. Listen to the words like a jazz solo. Like an improvisation where the words are just the notes. And I was like, bam, this motherfucker's jamming! I was right in it. And then I just started cracking up, not only laughing at the humor and getting the humor, but also being surprised that Ashbery was humorous.
DB: In the early 70s in DC, you played a central role in the development of what’s now called the Mass Transit school of poetry, involving the likes of Terence Winch, Bernard Welt, Phyllis Rosenzweig, Lynne Dreyer, Tina Darragh, P. Inman, Lee Lally, Tim Dlugos, Beth Joselow, Ed Cox, and others. Then, in 1975, you picked up and moved to New York City. Why?
Michael Lally at Folio Books, WDC, 1977. In background: Doug Lang, Terence Winch, Lynne Dreyer. Photo: Peter Barry Chouka.
ML: I just liked the idea of a fresh start. And, on top of that, I had met and become intimate with the artist and writer Joe Brainard. I also had numerous friends in New York already, and was traveling up there quite often. Some of these were first-generation New York poets John Ashbery, Jimmy Schuyler, and Edwin Denby, as well as second-generation poets like Ted Greenwald, Jim Brodey, Charles North, Paul Violi, Tony Towle, Bob Hershon, and John Godfrey. Also, I was getting flak from certain people in DC. I had been very close to the Black Arts Movement, and was close friends with some of the poets in it. But others didn't like my poetry after I was impacted by O'Hara's work. And when I came out as gay for a while, I got a lot of flak for that, too. So, there were a number of reasons to just take a bow and relocate. Even though part of me had a hard time leaving the close friends I had in DC, the New York City scene seemed very welcoming at the time.
DB: Were you able to just jump into the scene there?
ML: Well, it was complicated. I had great relationships with several first-generation New York poets already, which created problems with some second-generation poets. A lot of them had studied with Kenneth Kochand, you know, adored John. And here I was, this outsider, arriving in New York and being included in the first-generation circle.
But most were incredibly welcoming and loving, like Maureen Owen, a wonderful person, Lewis Warsh, and Bernadette Mayer. And eventually, I had dear friends in the third generation, too, poets like Greg Masters, Eileen Myles, Steve Levine, Elinor Nauen, Simon Pettet, Annabel Lee, and Maggie Dubris.
And of course, from our time together in Iowa, Ted Berrigan and I were as close as hell. I visited him and Alice Notley probably once a week, it seems like.
L to R: Actor & writer Karen Allen, Terence Winch, Michael Lally at the Poetry Project, 2002
DB: So, what do you think the impact of these poets has been over time?
ML: Certainly among the poets we've been talking about, their impact is widespread. I don't know where they fit, but for instance, poets Elaine Equi and Jerome Sala, originally from Chicago, are distinct from each other, and they're distinct from the New York School, but they're also impacted by it. I don't think you can have one without the other. So, yeah, I would say I can see New York School fingerprints everywhere.
I do think there was a mythology around the Beats that has made their tradition seem more impactful. And it certainly was and is. But if you want to be truly authentic about it all, the Beats and the New York School melded into each other and are very much connected. So basically, their collective impact covers almost all of modern poetry since the late 20th century.
That’s best expressed in what O’Hara’s work did for me. It gave me permission to be more truly myself. Because, you know, I'm a contradiction. I mean, I’ve always contradicted myself. For example, I've written poems about being gay, and I've written poems about not being gay.
DB: You know what? You’ve just reminded me of that wonderful line in in Whitman's “Song of Myself:”
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
ML: Amen.
VALENTINE
for Karen A.
It was a gorgeous day to wander around Georgetown.
I didn’t. I got up early, “wrote” a “book,”
listened to some “classical” music like Liszt and Couperin,
Buchanan and Dylan, read about a marriage that
by not being a real marriage at all turned out to be
a beautiful true marriage—what has “true”
got to do with “real” anyway—like today,
what has today got to do with me and you
besides the way it makes me feel full
the way you can do, brings the good things
people say the country offers right here to the city
for a countryphobe like me, so I leave my music and words
and catch the street. Everyone’s out today!
Claudia! Ed! Terry! Henry! Ralph! I wish I was
as bright as the day, so after a while of being dazzled
I go home and take a shower with all the windows open
and I shave and jump around to the good sounds—
I remember to take the huge heart shaped box of candy,
I bought it for the kids, out of the bag and put it
somewhere where it won’t melt. I drink some milk
and eat some cheese, think about all the people
I should write a poem to for “Valentine’s Day,”
for “Washington’s Birthday,” for this wonderful weather
the world gives us despite our arrogance and
belligerence toward it, but I notice the time and
there is no time! Got to run, so I do,
in some new shoes that hurt my toes, but the rest of
my clothes feel fine, and I know I am, on the street again
paying homage to the sun with my grin. I feel like
Ted Berrigan walking with my head held high, jaunty
like Hollywood English types, and a little mischievous too,
thinking about how I can do something fun and funny for you
like the sun is doing for me as I strut. There’s
my car! I haven’t seen it in almost 24 hours
so I throw it a kiss because I’m not a good owner
but I love it and that seems to keep something going.
I get in ready to cruise these canals to your veranda
or something Eddie Arnold and ’30s Hollywood like that,
only the corner of my eye catches the bank clock and
surprise! (Spencer Tracy in A Man’s Castle with
Loretta Young I think, swimming nude!) It’s 4:15 PM!
I can’t believe it! I go into Discount Books to look
for Terry to check. He’s not there but someone
I don’t know says “Hi Mike!” so I say “Hi. Do you know
what time it is?” and he looks at his watch and says
“Well, the government says it’s four twenty but
it’s really three twenty . . .” and some more words.
I don’t hear them thinking about you and “true” and
“real” and wondering what he meant the “real” time
and what was “mine” . . . You should be there because
it’s almost 5:30 in my life, but in the bank’s and
the guy who knows my name it’s only 4:30 and somewhere
out in abstract city it’s “really” only 3:30. Maybe
that’s why it’s so warm. I back up, back home, back
to back Dylan charms me to the typewriter where
I write to you to kill the time and to say
“Wontchu be my valentine?”
[Written, under peak Frank O'Hara influence, to lifelong dearest friend Karen Allen (poet and novice actor I had fallen in love with in 1973) on Valentine's Day 1974 in Washington DC, where you could then park overnight in our Dupont Circle neighborhood without fear of getting a ticket…]
©1974 Michael Lally
Michael Lally
Born Orange NJ, 1942, youngest of seven in Irish-American clan of cops, politicians, musicians, and a Franciscan friar; began reading poetry in bars and coffee houses in 1959; enlisted in the USAF (1962-66); ran for sheriff of Johnson County, Iowa, on The Peace & Freedom Party ticket in 1968 while at the U. of Iowa on the G.I. Bill. 31 books since 1970 include Another Way To Play: Poems 1960-2017 (Seven Stories Press 2018) and Say It Again: An Autobiography In Sonnets (Beltway Editions 2024); awards include National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellowships in 1974 and 1981 (the latter denounced in Congress by Republicans citing the poem “My Life” as “pornography” in first attempt to defund the NEA); 1997 PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award for “Excellence in Literature” for Cant Be Wrong (Coffee House Press 1997); 2000 American Book Award for It’s Not Nostalgia: Poetry & Prose (Back Sparrow Press 1999). Day jobs have included jazz pianist, book critic (Washington Post, Village Voice et. al.), TV and movie actor (NYPD Blue, Deadwood, White Fang, et. al. as Michael David Lally), screenwriter and script doctor (Drugstore Cowboy, Pump Up the Volume, et. al.). Writes the blog Lally’s Alley.