Howl

I am not a poetry fan. I don't really care to try and winkle out the meaning of a string of seemingly unrelated words and phrases. I know all poetry isn't like that. Some is very straightforward, but I typically don't care for that either. I guess I just prefer a narrative story in prose. I do consider this to be a shortcoming of mine, but I can't help myself.

Every once in a while, I will see or hear something that piques my interest in a poet. Usually it is a movie about the writer. I liked the movie Bright Star about John Keats, and Edge of Love (which was really less about Dylan Thomas than it was about the two women he loved). These movies were entertaining and interesting, but they were much more about the poet than the poetry.

The same cannot be said about Howl. In fact, this is truly a movie about a poem and the controversy its publication created. James Franco plays Allen Ginsberg and the film flashes between interviews with Ginsberg, portions of the obscenity trial, and a reading of the poem with animation. I've never seen anything like it.

Macho

Today a co-worker announced to me that Macho Man Randy Savage died. Even though I hadn't even thought of Macho Man in about 20 years, this saddened me. MM was never my favorite wrestler, I was much more of a Jake the Snake or Brutus the Barber girl. But still, his death reminded me of the WWF and going to the Erie Civic Center with my father, brother and great-grandfather.

Only in the 80's and early 90's could this man have been described as "Macho". Sure, he was muscular by any standard, but macho? The Village People might disagree, but that would just prove my point. Maybe it was all tongue-in-cheek, but I suspect not. If it was, I don't think wrestling fans were in on the joke.

No matter what, his untimely death (in what I understand was a car accident) at 58 is a sad event for his family, friends and fans. So snap into a Slim-jim and shout out a loud "Ohhh Yeahhh" for this unabashedly macho man.

The Death of Bin Laden

When my alarm clock woke me this morning the first thing I heard was "and news about the death of Osama Bin Laden". I was definitely groggy, but the import of the announcement did not fail to reach me. However, rather than feelings of elation, my reaction was more like "okay". Admittedly there was never much of a chance of me exulting in the death of anyone or anything, but I would have expected a more visceral reaction.

That reaction didn't come until much later in the day when I was exposed to countless jokes, "boot up his ass" type Facebook posts, and scenes of celebrating (read: rioting) in the streets from New York City to State College, PA and beyond. I do not presume to question the reactions of those who lost loved ones on September 11, or the families of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. But I suspect that those people were largely absent from the festivities, and while they may have felt that a sort of justice had been served, Bin Laden's death did nothing to bring back those who died before.

The fact remains that killing Bin Laden does nothing to dampen the spirit of Muslim extremists. In fact, he is now a martyr for their cause and they will probably believe that he is enjoying all the benefits of martyrdom in the afterlife. A far more fitting punishment would have been forcing him to live through the mercy of the United States and die a sick old man tried and found guilty of crimes against humanity.

I do not know what happened last night, if there was a choice between life and death, but I do know that how we react to this event is an indication of the state of our society. I believe we would do well to treat it with solemnity and circumspection otherwise we become what he and his followers believe us to be.