Jim Carroll (1949-2009)

[Tzara]

Jim Carroll died last Friday. If you know him at all, you probably know him as author of The Basketball Diaries, which was made into a film starring Leo DiCaprio. If you're a bit older, you'd remember him perhaps as a kind of flash-by rock star—last of the punks, so to speak.

Guy lived a remarkable, and sometimes awful, life (just go read The Basketball Diaries). He actually was first known as a poet, having been a protégé of Ted Berrigan and Ron Padgett. Published his first book of poems at the age of 22.

I mean, even St. Jack Kerouac gave the kid a blurb.

He was only 60 when he died.

Here's the only poem of his I could find online, "8 Fragments for Kurt Cobain."

 

[AChild]

Never read Basket Ball Dairies but I really liked Fear of Dreaming

 

[Tzara]

To Jim Carroll

I imagine you, quiet in the adolescent night,
that scarecrow hair the only brightness in the room.
You peck out words like needle scars
on the diary of your arm

and leave a map to Hell,
gridded by drugs and contrition.
I mount that map on a wall of dreams—
my evil dreams.

You also leave me cigarettes, but I
don't smoke.



.

 

[sassynyc]

To Jim Carroll

I imagine you, quiet in the adolescent night,
that scarecrow hair the only brightness in the room.
You peck out words like needle scars
on the diary of your arm

and leave a map to Hell,
gridded by drugs and contrition.
I mount that map on a wall of dreams—
my evil dreams.

You also leave me cigarettes, but I
don't smoke.



.

I like this a lot. Conjures up all the images of a tormented artist.
my favorite line:

You peck out words like needle scars
on the diary of your arm

​

Reads a lot like you looking in on him through the same window he viewed Cobain.