This Week's Writing 10/21/23
Scorsese, Langston Hughes, the 1973 peace treaty, and more.
The blog is coming to the magnificent end of its first year (much like the magnificent tail of the kitty.) I’ve almost got 5000 subscribers; hoping to hit that before the 30th, which will be the official anniversary (more or less.) Consider sharing if you’d like to help me reach this arbitrary goal!
In the meantime, here’s what I wrote this week.
If you read one piece by me this week read
The 1973 war and the 1973 peace. (EIH)
Politics
The GOP won’t condemn Menendez because they like corruption. (Public Notice)
Israel and American Jewish identity. (EIH)
Cultural Criticism
Killers of the Flower Moon shows Scorsese struggle to tell a story that isn’t about white guys. (CNN)
Langston Hughes, of his time. (EIH)
The 25 best albums of the 1950s. (EIH)
Poetry
Got a bunch of poems in above/ground press’ awesome lit mag. (Touch the Donkey)
A poem about pendulums, thursdays, and quilts. (Synchronized Chaos)
Uncharacteristically cheery poem about poetry. (Five Fleas)
My Poetry Keyboard
My keyboard is a lizard that bites.
My keyboard caught the train.
My keyboard makes jam from asparagus.
My keyboard is rain, is rain, is rain.
Little sleepless poem. (Five Fleas)
Insomnia.
I get so much done.
Until I don’t.
The poems - just a pleasure. As an insomniac I get it - the menendez situation infuriates me - your cat is 🔥 (ours finally caught the mouse that’s been eating her friskiest/wants a parade now). The Israeli-Hamas situation is breaking me for what that’s worth but not one zillion anywhere near what innocents on both sides are suffering.
from CNN Opinion on KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON: "“Killers of the Flower Moon” reveals that Scorsese’s narrative, genre-anchored, humanist approach to big, important filmmaking has serious limitations as well."
It's like I keep telling people—no matter what Scorsese SAYS his movie's about? In the end it's about gangsters, the same way comic book movies are about superheroes. He has no more room to lambaste Marvel movies than Kevin Feige has to mock Scorsese's love of low-level gangsters....
#SorryNotSorry—I've always felt Martin Scorsese is an incredibly overrated filmmaker with a handful of great movies and a LOT of mediocre crap in-between. Coppola can boast the first two GODFATHER movies and APOCALYPSE NOW as untouchable classics—I'm not even sure Scorsese's great movies (TAXI DRIVER, GOODFELLAS, THE DEPARTED) rise to that level. And every time he tries to stretch with films like THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST, ALICE DOESN'T LIVE HERE ANY MORE, or NEW YORK, NEW YORK, he just shows how, while he might be interested in those stories he doesn't really know how to tell them.
Well—I don't think it's a great movie, but one of my favorite Scorsese films is AFTER HOURS, where he perfectly captures artistic Eighties SoHo in a madcap comedic horror story about a not-very-likable protagonist trying to have a night out...and gets a LOT more of a night out than he bargained for!