I do a great deal of my reading on the Washington subway, as a daily commuter to and from my job in DC. (I’m one of the few poets I know who works a 9 to 5 office job; full-time work does take a serious bite out of one’s day, which is why I’m writing this at 9 p.m.) My subway reading this morning was Michael Lally’s South Orange Sonnets, a little book of 20 poems that had a significant influence on me as a young poet more than 35 years ago.
Michael Lally is a singular, original voice in American literature. I first met him in November of 1971, soon after moving to DC from the Bronx, and we became instant best friends, which we’ve remained ever since. I’ve already mentioned him in previous posts, but I’ll repeat again that he was responsible for starting Mass Transit, a weekly open poetry session in DC that helped launch the writing lives of many poets down here.
In the years since, Michael has published a prodigious amount of work, including two recent, fat books of poetry and prose from Black Sparrow (click here for more) and a long poem called “March 18, 2003,” written at the start of the Iraq war, that is the best piece of political poetry you will read on the context for that terrible misadventure (for more on the poem, click here). He also became a successful actor, with parts in many t.v. shows (Law and Order, JAG, Deadwood, et al.) and movies. Michael even had the lead in a couple of low-budget horror films that scared me, if no one else (but I have never been able to watch horror movies). If you read any substantive sample of his work, you will get a vivid sense of his life story and his obsessions―Michael’s writing is, at its heart, an absolutely convincing and brilliantly rendered enterprise in self-mythologizing. In the last few years, his eclectic interests―rooted in a passionate knowledge of politics, music, poetry, movies, and life―are on almost daily display via his blog, called Lally’s Alley (check it out). [ below: SOS back cover]
The South Orange Sonnets has never lost its impact for me. The language is perfectly in tune, with not a wasted note or an extra space anywhere in the text. (And, just to tie in with what I wrote about yesterday, this book is also a classic of contemporary Irish-American literature.)
4.
In East Orange Carol Robinson decided I
was her boyfriend. Her father found out
before I did. Told his friends and neigh-
bors how he didn’t want no white boy hang-
ing around his little girl. One asked me
not to pass the time at his house anymore
listening to his son’s Clifford Browns or
talking to his twin daughters. Walking
home that night three teenagers sitting
on a stoop on Halstead Street yelled: Hey
white boy, whatchu doin around here? You
know where you are? Where you from? When
I answered South Orange this fat girl said
Shoot, that muss be Carol Robs turkey.
9.
When my mother died two Irish geat aunts
Came over from New York. The brassy one
wore her hat tilted and always sat with
her legs wide apart. At the wake she told
me loud You look like your grandfather
the cop if you ever get like him shoot
yourself. The other one waited til after
the funeral to pull my ear down to her
level and whisper Youre a good looking
young man but if you don’t shave off them
side boards people will mistake you for
a Puerto Rican. We had so many cousins
in our neighborhood everybody called my
mother Aunt Irene. Even the Italians.
20.
My father lost the store, we all went to
work when I was ten. Then he became a
ward healer. My grandfather was dead before
I knew he spoke Gaelic. My father could
remember when they had mules instead of
automobiles and you had to remove your cap
and step to the curb to let the rich walk
by. My grandfather was glad to die in the
USA. He’d say if you can’t find a job within
thirty miles of New York Citythere aren’t
any jobs to be found. My father would say
You can write all the poetry you want to
when youre a millionaire. Eddie would say
You got to try a shoe on before you buy it.
(Note: The South Orange Sonnets is also included in It’s Not Nostalgia; another close friend of mine, Doug Lang, has posted an excellent piece on Michael and his work —see Doug’s post.)