seems to want to talk about poetry. She’s been spotted out and about a few times receently with a T-shirt inspired by Ginsberg’s Howl.
I’ve never been much for Ginsberg, myself, so instead of talking about Howl, I’ll offer up Karl Shapiro’s Hollywood as a counterpoint.
This poem has always been one of my favorites. It might actually be my favorite. It’s just… perfect. For me.
Hollywood, unfortunately, seems to be one of those masterpieces that, once acclaimed, has been lost to time. I couldn’t find it in it’s entirety online, anywhere. So, I typed it out myself. That way, it’ll at least be remembered here, if nowhere else.
This is a WWII era piece. The perspective here is that of a soldier daydreaming about the city while being deployed in the Pacific.
Hollywood
Farthest from any war, unique in time
Like Athens or Baghdad, this city lies
Between dry purple mountains and the sea.
The air is clear and famous, every day
Bright as a postcard, bringing bungalows
And sights. The broad nights advertise
For love and music and astronomy.
Heart of a continent, the hearts converge
On open boulevards where palms are nursed
With flare-pots like a grove, on villa roads
Where castles cultivated like a style
Breed fabulous metaphors in foreign stone,
And on enormous movie lots
Where history repeats its vivid blunders.
Alice and Cinderella are most real.
Here may the tourist, quite sincere at last,
Rest from his dream of travels. All is new,
No ruins claim his awe, and permanence,
Despised like customs, fails at every turn.
Here where the eccentric thrives,
Laughter and love are leading industries.
Luck is another. Here the body-guard,
The parasite, the scholar are well paid,
The quack erects his alabaster office,
The moron and the genius are enshrined,
And the mystic makes a fortune quietly;
Here all superlatives come true
And beauty is marketed like a basic food.
O can we understand it? Is it ours,
A crude whim of a beginning people,
A private orgy in a secluded spot?
Or alien like the word harem, or true
Like hideous Pittsburgh or depraved Atlanta?
Is adolescence just as vile
As this its architecture and its talk?
Or are they parvenus, like boys and girls?
Or ours and happy, cleverest of all?
Yes. Yes. Though glamorous to the ignorant
This is the simplest city, a new school.
What is more nearly ours? If soul can mean
The civilization of the brain,
This is a soul, a possibly proud Florence.