Void of Course (Penguin Poets) - Softcover

Book 56 of 150: Penguin Poets

Carroll, Jim

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9780140589092: Void of Course (Penguin Poets)

Synopsis

In 1973, at the age of twenty-three, Jim Carroll burst upon the poetry scene with his first collection, Living at the Movies, a book of vivid and inventive verse that won him comparisons to everyone from Arthur Rimbaud to Frank O'Hara.

Carroll's first new book of poetry in more than a decade, Void of Course presents work composed over the last two years. His major themes--love, friendship, desire, time and memory, and, above all, the ever-present city--emerge in an atmosphere where dream and reality mingle on equal terms. These seventy-seven poems range from graphic, sensuous shorter pieces to edgy stream-of-consciousness prose poems to longer, more contemplative works such as "While She's Gone," an eerie tour de force of longing over a departed lover. Void of Course establishes that Carroll's power and purity of vision are stronger than ever.

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About the Author

Jim Carroll’s bestselling memoir The Basketball Diaries was first released in 1978 and adapted as a film in 1995. Carroll’s work includes several collections of poetry as well as a asecond memoir, Forces Entries: The Downtown Diaries 1971-1973. As the leader of The Jim Carroll Band he released three albums as well as several spoken word recordings. He died in New York City on September 11, 2009.

Reviews

Carroll, experienced with heroin himself, offers belated advice to the corpse of Kurt Cobain in the volume-opening "8 Fragments for Kurt Cobain": the price of genius mixed with that of fame makes a fatal cocktail, "which starts out as a kiss / And follows like a curse." Desperation and desire emanate from Carroll's verse, but with a certain poignancy, as if these words just have to be said. Carroll exhumes his life and loves, and his candor at times startles. He can shift gears, from a dirge like the Cobain piece to a comical, though no less serious, aside on the avant-garde, Buddha, or his father's last words ("Promise me that you'll never eat / Any of that Japanese food. Promise"). A funky, amphetamine rhythm propels the collection and conjures the city, with its tenements, rushing crowds, flickering televisions, and park benches. As Carroll ages and matures, he acknowledges that "I've spent too much time / Expended angelic energy / On my own disintegration to hand the contract over / To another now." Benjamin Segedin

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