Ray DiPalma & Michael Lally

Wednesday

Ray DiPalma’s recent books include The Ancient Use of Stone (Seismicity Editions, 2009), Pensieri (Echo Park Press, 2009), Further Apocrypha (Pie in the Sky Press, 2009), L’Usage ancien de la pierre (Éditions Grèges, 2007), Quatre Poèmes (Éditions Comp’Act, 2006) (both books translated into French by Vincent Dussol), and Caper, Volume I. (ML & NLF, 2006). Among his earlier collections are Numbers and Tempers, Le Tombeau de Reverdy, Provocations, Hôtel des Ruines, Gnossiennes, and Letters. He lives in New York City and teaches at the School of Visual Arts.

Michael Lally has published 27 books, including: March 18, 2003 (Libellum and Charta Presses, with illustrations by Alex Katz); It’s Not Nostalgia (winner of an American Book Award) and It Takes One To Know One ( both from Black Sparrow Press);  Cant Be Wrong (Coffee House Press), winner of the 1997 Oakland Pen Josephine Miles Award for Excellence in Literature; Hollywood Magic (Little Caesar); Attitude (Hanging Loose); and the 1970s “underground bestseller” Rocky Dies Yellow (Blue Wind Press). Lally has worked at a variety of jobs, from college teacher to limousine driver, reviewing books for The Washington Post and The Village Voice, to screenwriting (e.g. narration for Drugstore Cowboy, co-wrote Fogbound, the Thessalaski International Film Festival award winner for 2003) and TV and film acting (e.g., played an artist on NYPD Blue, a psycho detective on JAG, a crusty cavalry captain on Deadwood, a detective in Basic Instinct, Sykes in White Fang, the voice of “Sparks” in Cool World, et al.) Since 2006, he has hosted a blog called Lally’s Alley that has become a popular forum for his eclectic interests—poetry, music, politics, art, movies, books.