Michael Lally: Poetry and Brain Surgery (Terence Winch)

 

On Friday, Nov. 13, 2009, poet and actor Michael Lally underwent brain surgery at Weill-Cornell hospital in Manhattan. The progression from normal existence to brain surgery took about two weeks—from the time he first experienced some enigmatic symptoms, to a host of tests, rapid research on doctors and hospitals, and the final choice of treatment.  A few days after the three-hour operation, further tests determined that the tumor was benign and the prognosis for full recovery excellent.

[at left: The Extraction of the Stone of Madness (The Cure of Folly), ca. 147580, by Hieronymus Bosch (ca.14501516). Removing “stones” from the head was a fairly common medieval operation; Bosch, however, depicts a flower as the object being removed.]

Readers of Michael’s excellent blog, Lally’s Alley, which is usually a vehicle for his passionately held opinions on politics, writing, music, movies, and art, along with his reflections on life and his seemingly uncontrollable need to create all manner of lists, have, in the last month or so, been given something else—the day-to-day chronicle of a poet regaining his cognitive abilities.  He had great difficulty at first putting words and sentences together; even listening to music or watching a movie were challenges. But over the past few weeks he has steadily gotten back his formidable powers of expression.  

  

It is clear, however, that Michael has, in very characteristic fashion, grown to value the traumatic and extraordinary experience he has been through, enjoying a soul-deep transformation in how he perceives the world around us.[photo: Will Farrell, His Holiness the Lally Dama, Terence Winch, Nov. 14, 2009]

 

Here’s a post he did from about a week after the operation (which I’ve re-arranged a little into a more poem-like shape):

 

500 DAYS OF SUMMER: After Brain Surgery

Could follow the simple plot

despite jumps in time.

Could appreciate the soundtrack.

But many finer points

I could not grasp.

Like where it’s set.

Seemingly a Midwest

version of L. A.

My mind kept objecting, kept asking,

WHERE ARE THESE PEOPLE?

And the connections between them

seemed false to me too.

Could not follow the young girl's

story or place in the story.

The big gaps in perception

making much of the film

seem almost atomized.

As if each scene,

each light,

each person, etc.

were uniquely and separately realized

without the usual fluid connection

between things that may be just in

our minds bridging those gaps for us.

What a strange trip this all is.