March 18, 2003: A Poem for Peace by Michael Lally, Drawings by Alex Katz

by Vincent Katz, Alex Katz

Michael Lally's epic poem--entitled to commemorate the first reading at a Poets Against the War event on what turned out to be the eve of the U.S. invasion of Iraq--is paired here with drawings by artist Alex Katz. Each successive line of the poem hypnotically speaks what could be the reader's own subconscious--emotions that struck us all after the events of September 11, 2001. Lally has his finger on our pulse and doesn't let up--dismantling the Bush dynasty and our American malady in ways both subtle and strong. Michael Lally is the author of It's Not Nostalgia, which won an American Book Award, and It Takes One to Know One. Alex Katz has had one-person exhibitions at museums throughout the world, including a major retrospective organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art. A Signed and numbered edition of 50 copies is also available.

64 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

Vincent Katz is a poet, translator, art critic, editor, and curator.

Reviews

[Greg Masters · Rating 5 out of 5]

A long poem written for the occasion of an anti-war event, the poem unfolds as a dialog with the reader as Lally's brain brings his rapid-moving thoughts to enunciation. I always enjoy the poet's streaming dialog. He writes the way an action painter disperses paint or a jazz musician improvises a solo building toward a cohesive resolution. If not always an answered prayer for a finite solution, the time spent reading is companionable and pleasurable for its momentum and entreaty to make sense.