SPARE A THOUGHT FOR NEW ORLEANS: As I'm writing this at about 12:30 a.m. on Monday, Hurricane Katrina is apparently going to make a direct hit on New Orleans. Having visited this beautiful city on many occasions (it's been the inspiration for some of my early poetry), I am fearful that this storm could destroy the Big Easy. They are talking about the possibility of 20 feet of water in the French Quarter. I can't even imagine. That would mean water on the second floor of buildings along Bourbon Street. If you've never been to NO, the city is basically a bowl surrounded by water on three sides. It's 10 feet below sea level in some place. If you're in Jackson Square, you have to climb up onto a levee to reach the Mississippi River. I'm hoping that the weather gods will spare the Big Easy once again.

It's been a busy poetry-filled weekend. As some of you know, I've taken over as editor of the Poetry Atlanta newsletter as well as compiling the events listing for emailing and posting on the website. The print newsletter should go in the mail tomorrow or Tuesday and the website at www.poetryatlanta.com will be updated by Sept. 1.

On Saturday night, I did an erotic poetry reading with Maria Helena Dolan, Toni Shifalo and Rupert Fike at the Cold Soup Dinner Theater, hosted by Lesly Fredman. Lesly has a lovely old home in Decatur with a giant front porch. Every few months she hosts a literary event on her giant front porch. This show was sold out and had a waiting list. The weather was steamy and hot, and so was the poetry and stories. Everyone blew me away, esp. Rupert's reading from his novella and his long poem about blues music. Maria's short story about an alien taking on human form to explore lesbian sex had us all laughing. Toni turned drinking a beer into something dirty in her piece and Lesly did a sexy reading of her recipe for chocolate mousse that had us all oohing and ahhing.

This afternoon, I went to dinner with Malory and we met up with Stuart to see Michael Winterbottom's controversial film 9 Songs. The film came out ages ago in the UK and already knew it was basically porn and rock music. And that's exactly what it is. There's no plot to speak of. A man and woman meet at a Black Rebel Motorcycle Club concert at Brixton Academy and for the next 69 minutes (69...hmmmm) they see eight other concerts (including the Von Bondies, Franz Ferdinand, Primal Scream and, most bizarrely, film composer Michael Nyman) and fuck each others brains out. And I do mean fuck. The actors (Kieran O'Brien and Margo Stilley) actually have oral sex and penetration...all graphically filmed. They seemed to be enjoying it, but I read they only met three days before beginning to film all the sex scenes. Kieran O'Brien is very well endowed, so while his acting career might suffer, at least no one can say he has a tiny dick. As for the film, maybe it's because I have almost zero interest in heterosexual intercourse and the bands all played songs that sounded alike, but I was bored. Every minute of that 69 minutes seemed to creep along. It was oddly un-arousing (is that a word?), maybe because it seemed like porn or maybe it was because you knew nothing about the characters so their was no investment in their actions or feelings. I've read a few reviews where people say it's so realistic and blah, blah, blah. Well, sure, it's realistic, but after you've seen a couple of people banging each other silly, it sort of becomes old hat. I told Malory it should have been called 9 Dongs. I'm sure some porn director is already working on that.

On a positive note, we saw the trailer for the new remastered version of the Louis Malle classic, Elevator to the Gallows, starring a luminous Jeanne Moreau. Can't wait to finally see this on the big screen.

Comments

nolapoet said…
http://kd5qel.blogspot.com
Anonymous said…
Lisa Allender here, saying I'm tempted to go see "9 Songs" ANYway, even though you said you became bored, Collin...
Why? Well, besides the fact that HALF of me enjoys heterosexual sex, I want to see if we're beginning to see a trend--I mean, wasn't there a young Hollywood actress a year or two ago, um, hmmmm...was it Chloe Sevigny?or Kyra Sedgwick? SOMEone--a "real" actress-- performed fellatio in an intense little film--- and well, it looks like "real" films are starting to include "hardcore" sex--interesting....
Collin Kelley said…
Robin, your blog is rocking. Everyone visit it. She's giving better hurricane coverage than CNN!

Lisa, the film you mention is The Brown Bunny with Chole Sevigny. I think they were dating at the time, so she had sucked him before I'm sure. I don't mind a little hardcore sex...I just like some plot to go with it, which 9 Songs was sorely lacking.

Popular Posts