“I stuck out my palm…/ the snow the pine needles / hit lightly //
I thought it was rain for a minute / I thought the game had been called” (On The Rush)
I got turned on to the poems of Jim Carroll in late spring, 1993. I learned that Jim Carroll was a New York City poet who worked for Andy Warhol and struggled with a heroin addiction he’d had since he was a teenager. His writing embraced the best aspects of Allen Ginsberg and Frank O’ Hara, who were major influences in his formative years. He spoke to the lunacy of youth while relishing the fact that he survived those years to create lines poignant and unsentimental.
The fall before that spring, I’d changed majors at the University of Pittsburgh, switching from geology to creative writing because it seemed right. I was tired of Chemistry classes. I’d read the Beats and all the Bukowski I could get my hands on. I was hitchhiking whenever I got the chance and becoming interested in all things related to altering my consciousness. A familiar scenario, I’m sure.
My new roommate for the summer, Dave, was a grad student whom I had met a few times at fraternity parties. He was a bouncer and studied psychology. We found common ground discussing music and books—he was into much of the same stuff I was reading. More importantly, he had a truly excellent CD collection. I think I scratched his copy of Kind Of Blue when it became stuck in the changer one night after far too many beers. Sorry, Dave.
Long story short, he asks if I had read Jim Carroll and say I haven’t. He loans me Basketball Diaries, Living at the Movies and Forced Entries. I do nothing but read Jim Carroll for the next two days. At the bar, Dave and I discuss the words and stories even though I’m not yet 21. Later in the summer, he mentions that Jim Carroll will be doing a reading and playing with his band the night before my birthday. Would I want to go? Absolutely, I say.
The night before the show, I drink far too much whiskey and pass out on my couch. I’m not sure how I got home but later I’m told I stopped breathing for a bit once I got there. I remember nothing of the next day. I have to scramble to get a new I.D. because the show is 21 & over and I lost my old one in the Atlantic Ocean. It wouldn’t happen now, but it all came together by the skin of my teeth. I’m amazed when the lights go down and Jim Carroll passes my seat on his way to the stage.
I’d never been to a reading and all the concerts I’d seen before were in arenas or at outdoor summer festival shows—shows where you feel enormously separated from the stage. That night felt intimate, warm and safe. I remember how tall he was when he passed me by, tall enough to dunk on me if I played some hoops. His voice was softer and more resonant than I would have thought. I’m always surprised to hear how the voices of poets I love sound in person. My expectations are so different. I once thought they should spit razor blades when they spoke.
He read poems and stories from his latest book, Fear of Dreaming, and I became even more convinced that poets were much cooler than rock stars. I knew I had made a leap of faith by studying writing and was excited to see what Carroll had made of himself. I heard “People Who Died,” from Carroll’s seminal record, Catholic Boy, for the first time that night and knew I could never top it. I don’t know what’s happened with a lot of my old friends, but I doubt many have passed away. Carroll’s, on the other hand…
I was bummed when no teacher ever referenced Jim Carroll in a poetry class or included his work in a handout. He was not to be found in any literary anthologies either. I was told that he wasn’t considered part of the literary canon. He is not academic enough, they say. I doubt he ever cared. Maybe it’s silly for me to care but I think he deserves to be read aloud in a classroom. Maybe it will be in my classroom. Maybe today I’ll have them read “Praying Mantis” and hope they feel the music of his words for the first time as I once did. It will be my way of saying, “I salute you, brother.”
Praying Mantis
Look at it
It’s all blank
The face in the photograph
Too dark for features
But the praying mantis
Just so clear
Its forelegs fingering my hair
And it’s there in focus on my shoulder
It teaches me my true name
It gives me this message:
Do not strike the low chord,
Lest its vibrations awaken the halls of Maya.
It instructs me on the ways when need be to hide
It wakens the serpent inside to throb, to burn
It pulls the arrow from my ear
And it whispers, whispers, whispers a last word
What seems the last vapors of a long dream
Like Baraka wrote, like James Brown sings
Whispers, “please, please, please.”
—Jim Carroll
