Another Way to Play: Poems 1960-2017
The collected works of a poet who bridges the rhythms and message of the beats, the disarming frankness of the New York School, and the fierce temerity of activist authors throughout the ages.

From a '60s-era verse letter to John Coltrane to a 2017 examination of Life After Trump, Another Way to Play collects more than a half century of engaged, accessible, and deeply felt poetry from a writer both iconoclastic and embedded in the American tradition. In the vein of William Carlos Williams and Frank O'Hara, Lally eschews formality in favor of a colloquial idiom that pops straight from the page into the reader's synapses. This is the definitive collection of verse from a poet who has been around the world and back again: verse from the streets, from the the political arena, from Hollywood, from the depths of the underground, and from everywhere in between. Lally is not a poet of any one school or style, but a poet of his own inner promptings; whether casual, impassioned, or ironic, his words are unmistakably his own. Here is a poet who can hold two opposed ideas in mind simultaneously, and fuse them, with pathos and humor, into his own idiosyncratic verbal art. As Lally himself writes: "I suffered, I starved, and so did my kids, / I did what I did for poetry I thought /and I never sold out, and even when I did / nobody bought."
1126893646
Another Way to Play: Poems 1960-2017
The collected works of a poet who bridges the rhythms and message of the beats, the disarming frankness of the New York School, and the fierce temerity of activist authors throughout the ages.

From a '60s-era verse letter to John Coltrane to a 2017 examination of Life After Trump, Another Way to Play collects more than a half century of engaged, accessible, and deeply felt poetry from a writer both iconoclastic and embedded in the American tradition. In the vein of William Carlos Williams and Frank O'Hara, Lally eschews formality in favor of a colloquial idiom that pops straight from the page into the reader's synapses. This is the definitive collection of verse from a poet who has been around the world and back again: verse from the streets, from the the political arena, from Hollywood, from the depths of the underground, and from everywhere in between. Lally is not a poet of any one school or style, but a poet of his own inner promptings; whether casual, impassioned, or ironic, his words are unmistakably his own. Here is a poet who can hold two opposed ideas in mind simultaneously, and fuse them, with pathos and humor, into his own idiosyncratic verbal art. As Lally himself writes: "I suffered, I starved, and so did my kids, / I did what I did for poetry I thought /and I never sold out, and even when I did / nobody bought."
15.99 In Stock
Another Way to Play: Poems 1960-2017

Another Way to Play: Poems 1960-2017

Another Way to Play: Poems 1960-2017

Another Way to Play: Poems 1960-2017

eBook

$15.99 

Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.
WANT A NOOK?  Explore Now

Related collections and offers


Overview

The collected works of a poet who bridges the rhythms and message of the beats, the disarming frankness of the New York School, and the fierce temerity of activist authors throughout the ages.

From a '60s-era verse letter to John Coltrane to a 2017 examination of Life After Trump, Another Way to Play collects more than a half century of engaged, accessible, and deeply felt poetry from a writer both iconoclastic and embedded in the American tradition. In the vein of William Carlos Williams and Frank O'Hara, Lally eschews formality in favor of a colloquial idiom that pops straight from the page into the reader's synapses. This is the definitive collection of verse from a poet who has been around the world and back again: verse from the streets, from the the political arena, from Hollywood, from the depths of the underground, and from everywhere in between. Lally is not a poet of any one school or style, but a poet of his own inner promptings; whether casual, impassioned, or ironic, his words are unmistakably his own. Here is a poet who can hold two opposed ideas in mind simultaneously, and fuse them, with pathos and humor, into his own idiosyncratic verbal art. As Lally himself writes: "I suffered, I starved, and so did my kids, / I did what I did for poetry I thought /and I never sold out, and even when I did / nobody bought."

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781609808310
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
Publication date: 04/24/2018
Sold by: Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format: eBook
Pages: 416
File size: 13 MB
Note: This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

A former jazz musician, Hollywood actor, and radical organizer, the New Jersey-born Michael Lally has worn many hats over the course of his life. But throughout it all, he has written accessible, deeply felt poetry. Themes of identity, love, success, and failure pervade through his body of work, but always with wry humor and the simple grace that is the mark of deep thought. Lally is the author of thirty books of poetry and prose, including Stupid Rabbits (1971), White Life (1980), It's Not Nostalgia (1999) and Swing Theory (2015). Lally is the recipient of the PEN/Oakland Josephine Miles Award for Excellence in Literature and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, among others. He lives in Maplewood, New Jersey.

Eileen Myles is a groundbreaking novelist, poet, and performance artist, whose books include I Must Be Living Twice: New and Selected Poems and Chelsea Girls.

Table of Contents

Actual Lally Eileen Myles xiii

Poems 1

Stupid Rabbits

"So, the novels …" 5

Hitchhiking To Atlantic City 5

Letter To John Coltrane 5

Hard Rain 6

In The Distance 7

The South Orange Sonnets

from The South Orange Sonnets 11

Dues

American Renaissance 23

Re 23

Two Poems While Something Crumbled 24

Once 25

Aint No 26

Watching You Walk Away 27

Revolution 27

Counterrevolution 28

Weatherman Blues 28

Rocky Dies Yellow

"Now I'm Only Thirty-Two" 33

You Remember Belmar NJ 1956 33

Song 34

Kent State May 4, 1970 35

Newark Poem 35

Dreaming Of The Potato 36

"We Were Always Afraid Of" 36

***Marilyn Monroe*** 37

Poem To 1956 37

Poetry 1969 38

Weatherman Goes Out 1969 41

Conversation With Myself 42

I Wish I Could Tell You About It 43

My Life

My Life 47

Charisma

Listen 59

More Than 59

Sonnet For My 33rd 59

Testimony 60

About The Author 60

Catch My Breath

Need 65

from Running Away 66

Empty Closets 66

Just Let Me Do It

Violets 73

2:Talking 73

In Harlem In 1961 73

Their Imagination Safe 75

So 77

Queen Jane 80

Today What If Everything Reversed 80

File 81

You Walk In 82

9.13.73 83

("I Stand") 84

In America 85

You Are Here 86

A Little Liszt For Olga 87

Valentine 88

Dark Night 90

Peaking 90

No Other Love Have I 92

Life Is A Bitch 93

In The Recent Future 94

On Turning 35 96

She's Funny That Way 97

White Life

Life 103

Superrealism 104

April Fool's Day 1975 105

"To Be Alone …" 107

So This Is Middle Age? 108

Attitude

The Other Night 113

Honky Hill (Hyattsvilie Maryland) 114

Out In The Hall 115

Eric Dolphy 116

"In 1962 I Was Living …" 117

Feeling 119

Lists 120

Touch 121

Falling In Love 121

Fathers Day 123

What We're Missing 124

2/4/76 125

Notice To Creditors 125

Snow 2 126

The Cold 127

Mother's Day 1978 128

Loving Women 133

Coming Up From The Seventies 136

"As Time Goes By" 140

Hollywood Magic

My Image 145

Something Quaint 146

The Women Are Stronger Than The Men 148

from DC 149

Another Way To Play 152

from ***On The Scene*** 154

Don't Fuck With Anti-Tradition 160

Tough Times 160

New York New York 161

The Secret 163

In The Evening 164

Sometimes 167

Alone Again, Naturally 168

Piece Of Shit 170

from Hollywood Magic 171

"Soft Portraits" 176

from It's Not Just Us 178

Dues, Blues, & Attitudes 183

The Night John Lennon Died 185

Fuck Me In The Heart Acceptance! 186

Cant Be Wrong

Going Home Again 191

Sports Heroes, Cops And Lace 201

Holiday Hell 206

20 Years Ago Today 210

Disco Poetry 216

The Sound of Police Cars 219

Having It All 220

Something Back 225

Young Love 228

Isn't It Romantic? 231

They Must Be Gods And Goddesses 237

Obsession Possession And Doing Time 241

That Feeling When It First Goes In 244

I Overwhelmed Her With My Need 245

I'm Afraid I'm Gonna Start 247

from Fools For Love 247

Lost Angels 2 249

Last Night 251

Attitude And Beatitude 253

Turning 50 257

Where Do We Belong 259

Of

from Of 279

It's Not Nostalgia

It's Not Nostalgia-It's Always There 293

Patterns 310

4.4.80 311

Lost Angels 313

Six Years In Another Town 320

On November Second Nineteen Ninety Three 329

My Life 2 332

It Takes One to Know One

What? 337

Heaven & Hell 337

Who Are We Now 338

Is As 339

from Hardwork 340

from The Rain Trilogy 343

Brother Can You Spare A Rhyme? 347

Know 349

Walk On The Wild Side 350

The Healing Poem 352

Forbidden Fruit 357

Bad Boys And Women Who Want It All 358

Attitude, Gratitude, and Beatitude 359

More Than Enough 360

It Takes One To Know One 362

March 18, 2003

from Match 18, 2003 367

Swing Theory

Before You Were Born 381

Birth/Rebirth 382

The God Poems 388

Swing Theory 1 390

The Geese Don't Fly South 391

Give Me Five Minutes More 395

Dear Birds 397

from The 2008 Sonnets 400

Tea Party Summer 404

Swing Theory 2 406

Poem On The Theme: Arthritis 407

Swing Theory 3 417

String Theory 418

from So And 419

The Jimmy Schuyler Sonnets 435

November Sonnet 438

The San Francisco Sonnets (1962) 438

Swing Theory 4 441

How The Dark Gets Out 441

To The Light 442

Love Never Dies 444

Fighting Words 449

Swing Theory 5 450

The Village Sonnets

from The Village Sonnets 453

New Poems

from New York Notes (2004) 473

To My Son Flynn 522

Most Memorable Movie Mothers 523

Two Post-Brain-Operation Observations 523

Blizzard of '16 524

Take It Easy 527

Too Many Creeps 530

First Two Reactions 531

The Times They're Always Changin' 534

Love is the Ultimate Resistance 536

From the B&N Reads Blog

Customer Reviews