Needless to say this little cinematic effort to put the sense of Allen Ginsberg's seminal modernist poem, Howl, on the screen is more than welcome. As I have repeatedly emphasized on previous occasions any poem that starts of like this one is going to get my attention and keep it every time. I would have given a lot, if only I had been old enough, to be in that gallery seated next to Jack Keroauc in that beat, heat San Francisco night to hear this start:

"I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn, looking for an angry fix, angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night . . .''

I have also of late made note of the influence of the "beats" in my own youthful political and social development in reviewing books and films about Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady and the gang. A prima facie case can be made by me, and has recently in this space, that Ginsberg's Howl is his search for the blue-pink great American West night that animated my youth, and the youth of my generation of the 1960s. Who would have thought that a poem (and the legal tangle involved in its publication and distribution), with help from an excellent cast starting with James Franco, could carry a whole film. Kudos.