Sunday Night Movie: ‘Howl’

The boyfriend and myself watched (well in truth, fell asleep to) James Franco as Beat poet Allen Ginsberg in ‘Howl’ late last night. I want to stress the ‘late’ part of the last sentence as this is the reason we fell asleep before the end and not because the movie bored the zzzzzz’s out of us. I liked the movie. Plus, having never read any Ginsberg prior to this I found it to be an intruiging introduction into his mind and work. The film is built much like a jigsaw which I’m sure a lot of people won’t like (there is no continuous plot to speak of) but I think this serves only to reflect the surreal style of the poem itself. I particularly loved the animated sequences which regularly interspersed the courtroom scenes and the scenes where Ginsberg muses about his art and its influences.         

I’m a big fan of James Franco and I thought he did a splendid job as the gay Beats poet. He captivated me in every scene and I completely and utterly believed him in the role.  I wouldn’t recommend this movie to anyone not into poetry or literature as it is basically just a dramatization of the poem and a peek into the mind of its author. I’d give it a 3 out of 5 as visually it is gorgeous and Franco made it impossible to take your eyes or ears off of him. Also, I want to read Howl as a result of watching this movie so obviously it did something right ;).

My favourite lines from Bukowski

I’ll forever be indebted to my ‘Miss California Sunshine’ friend, Mary, for introducing me to the amazing works of Charles Bukowski. The venerable ‘Dirty Old Man’ was a drunk, a degenerate, a womanizer, a genius and a real piece of shit.  But boy could he draw sparks when he put pen to paper. I recently finished ‘Women’- a 300 page sleaze-fest in which Bukowski’s alter-ego Henry Chinaski fucks his way through an astonishing carousel of young fans, druggies, misfits and various others who seemed to have fallen down through the cracks in society like himself.

I’m laying down here a few of my favourite Bukowski quotes- either from himself or from his work. First I’ll start with the poem I currently have stuck on my fridge door……

You, by Charles Bukowski

you’re a beast, she said
your big white belly
and those hairy feet.
you never cut your nails
and you have fat hands
paws like a cat
your bright red nose
and the biggest balls
I’ve ever seen.
you shoot sperm like a
whale shoots water out of the
hole in its back.

beast beast beast
she kissed me,
what do you want for
breakfast?

Some of my favourite quotes:

~There was nothing really as glorious as a good beer shit—I mean after drinking twenty or twenty-five beers the night before. The odor of a beer shit like that spread all around and stayed for a good hour-and-a-half. It made you realize that you were really alive~

~Parties sickened me. I hated the game-playing, the dirty play, the flirting, the amateur drunks, the bores~

~Sex is interesting, but it’s not totally important. I mean it’s not even as important (physically) as excretion. A man can go seventy years without a piece of ass, but he can die in a week without a bowel movement~

~Well, people got attatched. Once you cut the umbilical cord they attatched to the other things. Sight, sound, sex, money, mirages, mothers, masturbation, murder, and Monday morning hangovers~

~The difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a democracy you vote first and take orders later; in a dictatorship you don’t have to waste your time voting~

~I don’t like jail, they got the wrong kind of bars in there~

Lovely pages

 I recently laid down my finished copy of David Mitchell’s ‘Ghostwritten’ with the same feeling of mourning with which I lay down a finished bowl of ice cream, or a cup of hot chocolate. It was delicious, it sated me, and I didn’t want it to end.

 The richly diverse characters and deep, atmospheric plot swept me away to the 9 different parts of the world the story travails every time I picked up this book and turned it’s lovely pages…the ‘Tokyo’ chapter in particular really reminded me of a Haruki Murikami novel.

 Next I want to read ‘Cloud Atlas’ by the same author~ must order it in from Seoul!

 

An urban’s dictionary by C. Jak Mussington

Congratulations to my friend and fellow “guest English teacher” cohort here in Korea, Jazmine Mussington, who had one of her poems published this morning on Metazen~ a literary blog that likes “odd stories and odd poems, but ones that touch you in a special way”.

Here is Jazz’s odd poem, which I just happen to think is great…

An urban’s dictionary by C. Jak Mussington

Actin’ Out
[ak-tin out]

-v.

2. To express (unconscious impulses, for example) in an overt manner without
conscious understanding or regard for social appropriateness [1]

We were actin’ out opposed to wildin’ out, which is a complete disregard to social norms.

We were actin’ out; we acted out because we’ll believe in anything and in anyone. We were

actin’ out; we acted black, we acted white, we acted cool, we acted rich, we acted liberal, we

acted poor, we acted conservative, we acted like we are in the middle, and we acted brave. We

were actin’ out; we acted like fools, wrong and proud, right and apologetic, we acted out fads,

we acted sad for them, we acted happy for them, we acted afraid, we acted indifferent, we acted

in, we acted out, and we acted out just to act out. We were actin’ out; we acted out who we

thought we should be, we acted out who we were told to be, we acted out who we wanted to be,

we acted out lives, our lives, and we acted like we believed. We were actin’ out; we acted like

we didn’t know who we were when we were acting out.

[1] dictionary.com

Milf
[milf]

-n.
A sexually attractive middle-aged woman
[c21: from m(other) I(‘d) l(ike to) f(uck) ]1

She remembers—

respect

and how the earth moved

when boys sprouted from the soil.

They came to her wet.

Their young mouths sucked in

hard; her milk only nourished

as they swelled into men.

C. Jak Mussington, born Jazmine Mussington, graduated from St. Lawrence University. She was recently published in Indigo Rising Magazine, Haggard and Halloo Publications, and two of her poems will appear in Breadcrumb Scabs’ 26th issue. You can find her on twitter(:) http://twitter.com/cjakmussington, http://www.followthestay.com, facebook(:) http://www.facebook.com/cooper.mussington , or standing on a crate reciting poems.