Michael Lally (poet)

Last updated
Michael Lally
Born (1942-05-25) May 25, 1942 (age 81)
Orange, New Jersey
Occupation Poet, Playwright, Actor

Michael Lally (born May 25, 1942) is an American-born poet and the author of more than 30 books of poetry. He is considered part of the New York School of poetry, which began in the early 1950s and is acknowledged as one of the most influential movements of American poetry. He counts among his major influences the poets Frank O'Hara and William Carlos Williams, as well as writer William Saroyan. [1] [2] [3]

Contents

Biography

Early years

Lally was born in Orange, New Jersey, the youngest of seven in an Irish-American family of policemen, priests, and politicians, and raised in South Orange, New Jersey. [4] His autobiographical style of poetry and prose reflects on American culture from the 1950s forward: civil rights, gay rights, women's rights and anti-war movements and his active participation in each.

Lally started out playing piano and reading his poetry in coffeehouses and bars in 1959. In 1962 he joined the United States Air Force, where he spent more than four years as an enlisted man, and later used the G.I. Bill to attend the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. In the Fall of 1968, while living in Iowa, Lally actively campaigned for the position of Johnson County Sheriff as part of the Peace and Freedom Party ticket. [5]

Writing career

In 1972 he wrote the autobiographical South Orange Sonnets which received a New York Poetry Center Discovery Award.

Acting career

He moved from New York to Los Angeles in 1982 and acted in movies and TV (as Michael David Lally), mostly as a bad guy and the occasional good guy. He was seen in films including Basic Instinct (1992), White Fang (1991) and Cool World (1992), as well as on TV as Captain Bubb in Deadwood (2004), Walter Hoyt on NYPD Blue (1995–97) and Detective Frank Costa on JAG (1997–98). [6] His writing found its way into several movies including .

Personal life

Lally has been married three times. His first wife was Carol Lee Fisher from 1964 to 1979. His second wife was Penelope Milford from 1982 to 1984. [7] He then wed a third time to Jaina Flynn in 1997 before separating in 2003. Lally has three children: Caitlin, Miles and Flynn.

Bibliography

Books

Plays

Film

Song

Notable awards

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Bromige</span> American poet

David Mansfield Bromige was a Canadian-American poet who resided in northern California from 1962 onward. Bromige published thirty books, many so different from one another as to appear to be the work of a different author. Associated in his youth with the New American Poetry and especially with Robert Duncan and Robert Creeley, Bromige is sometimes associated with the language poets, but this connection is based more on his close friendships with some of those poets, and their admiration for his work. It is difficult to fit Bromige into a slot. He departs from language poetry in the thematic unity of many of his poems, in the uses to which he puts found materials, with the romantic aspect of his lyricism, and with the sheer variety of his approaches to the poem.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Ashbery</span> American poet

John Lawrence Ashbery was an American poet and art critic.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Lowell</span> American poet (1917–1977)

Robert Traill Spence Lowell IV was an American poet. He was born into a Boston Brahmin family that could trace its origins back to the Mayflower. His family, past and present, were important subjects in his poetry. Growing up in Boston also informed his poems, which were frequently set in Boston and the New England region. The literary scholar Paula Hayes believes that Lowell mythologized New England, particularly in his early work.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Howard Nemerov</span> American poet

Howard Nemerov was an American poet. He was twice Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, from 1963 to 1964 and again from 1988 to 1990. For The Collected Poems of Howard Nemerov (1977), he won the National Book Award for Poetry, Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, and Bollingen Prize.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charles Reznikoff</span> American poet

Charles Reznikoff was an American poet best known for his long work, Testimony: The United States (1885–1915), Recitative (1934–1979). The term Objectivist was coined for him. The multi-volume Testimony was based on court records and explored the experiences of immigrants, black people and the urban and rural poor in the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He followed this with Holocaust (1975), based on court testimony about Nazi death camps during World War II.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eavan Boland</span> Irish poet, author, and professor (1944–2020)

Eavan Aisling Boland was an Irish poet, author, and professor. She was a professor at Stanford University, where she had taught from 1996. Her work deals with the Irish national identity, and the role of women in Irish history. A number of poems from Boland's poetry career are studied by Irish students who take the Leaving Certificate. She was a recipient of the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ed Dorn</span> American poet

Edward Merton Dorn was an American poet and teacher often associated with the Black Mountain poets. His most famous work is Gunslinger.

Clayton Eshleman was an American poet, translator, and editor, noted in particular for his translations of César Vallejo and his studies of cave painting and the Paleolithic imagination. Eshleman's work has been awarded with the National Book Award for Translation, the Landon Translation prize from the Academy of American Poets (twice), a Guggenheim Fellowship in Poetry, two grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, and a Rockefeller Study Center residency in Bellagio, Italy, among other awards and honors.

Alice Notley is an American poet. Notley came to prominence as a member of the second generation of the New York School of poetry—although she has always denied being involved with the New York School or any specific movement in general. Notley's early work laid both formal and theoretical groundwork for several generations of poets; she is considered a pioneering voice on topics like motherhood and domestic life.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hayden Carruth</span> American poet and literary critic

Hayden Carruth was an American poet, literary critic and anthologist. He taught at Syracuse University.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jayanta Mahapatra</span> Indian poet (1928–2023)

Jayanta Mahapatra was an Indian poet. He is the first Indian poet to win a Sahitya Akademi award for English poetry. He was the author of poems such as "Indian Summer" and "Hunger", which are regarded as classics in modern Indian English literature. He was awarded a Padma Shri, the fourth highest civilian honour in India in 2009, but he returned the award in 2015 to protest against rising intolerance in India.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">X. J. Kennedy</span> American poet

X. J. Kennedy is an American poet, translator, anthologist, editor, and author of children's literature and textbooks on English literature and poetry. He was long known as Joe Kennedy; but, wishing to distinguish himself from Joseph P. Kennedy, he added an "X" as his first initial.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aram Saroyan</span> American poet

Aram Saroyan is an American poet, novelist, biographer, memoirist and playwright, who is especially known for his minimalist poetry, famous examples of which include the one-word poem "lighght" and a one-letter poem comprising a four-legged version of the letter "m".

Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.

William Baer is an American writer, editor, translator, and academic. He has been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Fulbright (Portugal), and a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paul Hoover (poet)</span> American poet and editor (born 1946)

Paul Hoover is an American poet and editor born in Harrisonburg, Virginia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jack Anderson (dance critic)</span> American poet and dance critic (1935–2023)

Jack Warren Anderson was an American poet, dance critic, and dance historian. He is well known for his numerous reviews of dance performances in The New York Times and Dance Magazine as well as for his scholarly studies in dance history and for eleven volumes of poetry.

Ken Edwards is a poet, editor, writer and musician who has lived in England since 1968. He is associated with The British Poetry Revival.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Doren Robbins</span> American poet

Doren Robbins is a contemporary American poet, prose poet, fiction writer, essayist, mixed media artist, and educator. As a cultural activist, he has organized and developed projects for Amnesty International, the Salvadoran Medical Relief Fund, the Romero Relief Fund, and poetsagainstthewar.org. Robbins has lived most of his life in California and Oregon.

Michael Benedikt was an American poet, editor, and literary critic.

References

  1. "Michael Lally". Outlaw Poetry. August 2015. Retrieved 19 June 2020.
  2. "Michael Lally". The Poetry Foundation. Retrieved 19 June 2020.
  3. Myles, Eileen (18 April 2018). "First of All I'm Naked: On the Collected Poems of Michael Lally". The Paris Review. Retrieved 19 June 2020.
  4. Stewart, Susan. "Food, Drink, and Plenty of Literary Dish", The New York Times , November 25, 2007. Accessed July 28, 2011. "Michael Lally, a New Jersey poet, did not seem to be suffering from a surfeit of fame. He sat at the writers’ table and waited his turn at the lectern.... Mr. Lally read next, from a work-in-progress he called “Poor Moth Boy on the Moon,” about growing up Irish Catholic in South Orange, N.J."
  5. "Johnson Co." Times-Democrat (Davenport-Bettendorf, Iowa). November 6, 1968. p. 4. Retrieved April 20, 2022 via Newspapers.com.
  6. "Michael David Lally". IMDb .
  7. "Michael Lally wedding invitation". From A Secret Location. December 30, 2016. Retrieved April 20, 2022.

Further reading