At long last, I saw the movie Howl with James Franco as Allen Ginsberg and a dapper Don Draper/Jon Hamm as the attorney defending the poem’s publisher, beat godfather, poet, and bookstore owner, Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

There was no good reason for me to have waited so long to see it (there was a good reason not to see it in the theatres; during the sole week it was playing in Washington, my parents were visiting and had little interest in making the journey over to the independent cinema to see it, so my suggestions fell on deaf ears), but it was worth the wait.

James Franco gave a restrained and relatively non-meta performance as the poet. Jon Hamm was imperious and noble looking in his defense of art, literature, humanism, and the liberal mind (did you know that once upon “liberal” was not a dirty word, but rather what people regularly aspired to be?).

In high school, myself, Matt, Scott and some others expressly sought to model ourselves on the beats. We argued about the portrayals of Neal Cassady in Howl vs On the Road (Scott’s nickname was even Dean Moriarty on account of his willingness to drive anywhere).

Watching the movie Howl makes one want to be part of something bigger. Something important about literature and expression. But sadly, what has happened instead is that literature and especially poetry has been pushed to the edge of irrelevance.