The Adventures of Pizarro Delacroix

A poem so good, it was published again at Reprint. 

A song so good it makes me nostalgic for the NYU food court. Ah Upstein. Ah Humanity. 

See if you can pass this test: Westminster Dog name or a line from Ginsberg's Howl?

Poetry In the Brooklyner and Other News

Hello all, some updates from the very sedate files of Mr. Nardolilli:

I have three poems up in the Brooklyner. Read one of them here, another here, and the last one in this place.

Here's a link to a project centered on the life of little known counterculture figure Shig Murao that presents his life and work. He was the one who was actually arrested for selling Allen Ginsberg's Howl. Unfortunately his role was not depicted in the recent film based on the famous censorship trial, even though he was a defendant along with Lawrence Ferlinghetti (whose last name the spellchecker recognizes, boy is Google Chrome one hep cat!). I reviewed the film when it first came out a year ago.  Besides Howl, Shig was involved with City Lights bookstore, the San Francisco renaissance, and was an early zine publisher. In addition he was also a survivor of the Japanese internment and Allen Ginsberg lived out of his closet. A pretty interesting life all around. 

Oh, and I was nominated for a Pushcart for a poem in my poetry chapbook.

Howl: A Movie Review

For Allen Ginsberg

Except for epics, poems usually don't get movies of their own. The poets are the ones who get the films, though rarely. Eliot and Keats were famous enough to have them. The reasons are simple, most poems do not have stories and are not long enough to sustain a film. Unfortunately, people also do not give the same attention to poetry as they do to prose as well, which means there is less of an in-built audience for an adaptation.

Ginsberg's Howl is one of the few poems that could be turned into a movie, or at least be used as the centerpiece of one. The poem is long enough and it has a story, not just in its creation, but also in its publication and the obscenity trial that ensued. It has been read by millions of people (including the lady who sold me my movie ticket) and many know parts of it by heart. It helped usher in the social revolutions of the 1960s, and changed the nature of American poetry forever.

Of course, a straight adaption would be difficult, if not impossible. The poem contains many surreal images and symbols. It does not have a conventional narrative with any identifiable hero (other than Neal Cassady). These are its great strengths, along with an openness and frank discussion of once taboo topics of sex and drugs. Yet they prevent a conventional movie adaptation from happening. Besides, trying to literally present the poem in unimaginative ways would betray the revolutionary nature of Howl itself.

So it was up to writers and directors Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman to craft an unconventional movie that mostly stays true to the spirit of the poem and helps educate viewers about Ginsberg and the piece. It combines James Franco as Ginsberg giving an interview where he talks about Howl, scenes of him presenting it at its first reading, the court case over it in San Francisco, and animated sequences that give an artistic interpretation of the poem. Despite these different strands, the directors weave them together well, though the animated portions are not as well integrated. Their tone and color seems out of place, as such sequences often do when used in movies, and the images suffer from being too literal and cliche at times.

The performances were good, though many of the actors did not have time to shine. James Franco plays a young Allen Ginsberg perfectly. He has the poet's vocal and physical mannerisms, and captures his cadences when reciting Howl for his audience. Ginsberg's sensitive and intellectual nature is reflected in Franco's portrayal along with his shyness and physical longing for companionship and affection. John Hamm is confident and bold as defense attorney Jake Ehrlich and his opponent David Strathairn is equally compelling in his performance as the prosecutor. The rest of the Beats who feature in the movie get shortchanged, with not enough opportunities to portray their characters and show their charisma and influence on Ginsberg.

What the movie needed most was to explore the development of the poem, which was only hinted at. James Franco's Allen Ginsberg talks about his fears of his father reading the poem, without telling the audience that he did send it to his father Louis (also a poet) and it was his way of coming out. His father only commented on the blue language. He also sent it to William Carlos Williams, whose role as a mentor of sorts is missing. The movie also fails to spend much time on his relationship with his mother, a critical influence on his life and poetry. There is mention of it, but the true nature of what happened is never revealed.

The ending of the film discusses the fates of those involved with Howl and its writing, with Ginsberg's "Father Death Blues," played over it, and is highly moving. The face of the real Allen Ginsberg appears as an old man, along with the fact he died in 1997. I think this is one of the most important sections in the movie, and most reviews of Howl will probably miss out on its significance. It helps remind the young aspiring writers watching it that the Beat Generation is pretty much gone, its leaders dead, some for a long time. It is up to us to now create literary movements of our own, giving eyeball kicks to the culture in hopes of jump starting it.

Overall, I give the movie a B+ grade. The performances redeem the animated parts, though more on the other Beats could have been included. The genesis of the poem needed more explanation, to show how Ginsberg took the exploits of his friends and turned them into surreal spiritual situations. The film gets points for dealing with Ginsberg's homosexuality and discussing it, showing his relationship to Peter Orlovsky as well. The discussion about censorship and what counts as literature is valuable to listen to and makes one think about their own positions on these issues. The movie is best for those who are just discovering Ginsberg and the Beats and want to learn more about them. Those who are long term fans of the work will probably get less out of the film.

“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by brevity”

I recently read an attempt to create a Howl for my generation. I do not make the allusion myself, the author set it up so, with a single word title meant to juxtaposition with Ginsberg's poem. So comparisons can be made, the point of the poem in the first place. Doing so, one sees that it has its moments but it is no reincarnation, only a parody. However, it was not as good a parody as reading The Waste Land by Orson Welles. "Tweet" does not make it new, as another poet known for his use of homages would say.

I think it may have suffered from the formating of the website. Such a work needs space for the words to breathe. But mostly, it falls flat not in its diagnosing of the problem, but in its referencing. Instead of Ginsberg's use of his friend's adventures and his own intellectual endeavors as a source for an epic, Miller's work reads like a laundry list. It is in need of eyeball kicks and more skillful use in condensing.

These sorts of things have been written before. I remember reading a different one that was about the yuppies. A direction adaptation and twisting worked in this case because it was meant to comment on hos a generation had sold out, or at least refused to carry the flame of challenging assumptions. A Howl for my generation, to be taken seriously, requires a different sort of indignation and rage. It must tell the tale of us not destroying ourselves, but our being witnesses the self-destruction of everything around us. It must deal with how our birthright has been lost. I think it is fitting to consider ourselves a sort of Generation Esau.

Above all, the interesting thing is how Howl, a poem that was as free as any verse could be at the time, has now become its own form. Poems come from it, they have the same structure and make the same stops. A series of expectations is built into the nature of the references, how they are voiced, made, and changed, if indeed they are changed. The process starts right at the beginning. What minds did the author see, and how were they destroyed?