The silence of this site is being interrupted to offer a sad wish of “rest in peace” to the great poet, musician and – yes – basketball player, Jim Carroll. He died of a heart attack last Friday.
If you don’t know his work, get to know it now. If you know it, celebrate it now.
Start with his autobiography, “The Basketball Diaries.” Read his poems from “Living at the Movies.” And read them all while listening to his album, “Catholic Boy.” You won’t be sorry.
Jim Carroll’s ex-wife, Rosemary, was instrumental in getting our band, Drunken Boat, signed to a label in 1990. She’s currently married to a founding member of Food & Water’s board of directors, Danny Goldberg
Below is video/trailer of Carroll’s “People Who Died,” that, unfortunately, includes far too many images of Leonardo DiCaprio – the fellow who got to play Carroll in the movie about his early years as a New York City livewire.
And below that is one of my favorite Carroll poems, entitled simply enough: Poem (from “Living at the Movies”). I can still remember the intense discussion it started when I read it from memory in my University of Iowa English class in 1984.
And, finally, a video excerpt of Carroll reading his work. The dude could write.
Poem (by Jim Carroll)
The tea is boiling
sun in morning shademy eyes squint on a red sofa
my teeth brushed electrically in the bath room
the rest of me does yoga on the lawnyour wife is turning pale, she is sick
of the hindu next door, sparkling lice
nest in her hair…I seewater flowers shoot up on thin layers of ocean fog
your son is in the corner tossing an epileptic fit…
we start to feel enclosed
like mannequins in storage start
to shiver, figure out someway to occupy our mindsstart to knit or something
Sorry neighbors, but I’ll beating my drums this afternoon. For Jim. And my sorrow.
To something like this:
Recent Comments