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CWrotb' Past & Present Poetry
Jim Carroll is a poet and performer whose credits include
Forced Entries: The Downtown Diaries, Living At The Movies, The
Book of Nods and Fear of Dreaming. In addition to his writing, he
has also released three albums with The Jim Carroll Band, and his
bestseller The Basketball Diaries, chronicling his heroin addic
tion, was made into a movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio. This is
part one of a two-part talk.
Flagpole: This is my first interview.
Jim Carroll: Really?
FP: Do you remember the first thing you ever wrote?
Carroll: The first thing I ever wrote creatively was I got this assignment
in like the fourth grade. It was a lay teacher. I think she died or some
thing. But at any rate, she said we could write either some kind of cre
ative thing like a short story or a poem. And I thought, you know, piece of
cake, man. So I wrote this poem, and it just totally came out. It was about
a church bell. And then it was kind of running down, you know — I
could ring when people go to church. I could ring when people are mar
ried, I could ring when people have their first communion. And then at
the end it was and then I could ring when people die. And they thought I
plagiarized it.
FP: Really?
Carroll: Yeah, cause they thought the thought in it was too much above...
FP: Fourth grade level?
Carroll: My mother even thought I plagiarized it. So that was interesting
to me. I was about 8 then. I didn't write another poem until I was like
about 14 or 15. 'Cause, I thought, you know, writing poems was wimpy.
FP: When did you start writing a diary?
Carroll: The end of when I was 12, actually. 'Cause I was still in Catholic
grade school.
FP: / guess I read at one time that you were working on two novels. Are
you still?
Carroll: These two ideas came to me at about the same time. It’s kind of
a blessing and a curse. One is much more linear and straight novel and
much more commercial, definitely. And the agent is like...
FP: ‘Go with this."
Carroll: But that's not the one I'm working on first.
FP: Do you have any plans in the future to reform The Jim Carroll
Band?
Carroll: During The Basketball Diaries, they asked me
for some new songs. I did a couple of rockers that I
wrote that were fun to write, the kind of lyrics like a 15-
year-old kid again. But they didn't use any of them in
the movie because they had too many songs anyway.
FP: Right.
Carroll: About two weeks ago, they're doing this
Kerouac album where like people read his work or
unpublished stuff. It bugs me because before I could
just say no I don't want to do music, but now I’ve got
these songs and stuff and it draws me into that. I
did put out Praying Mantis on Giant/Reprise, but I
didn't want to do any music on it. I hate music with
poetry. If I was gonna do that, I'd just do rock and roll
FP: People come to poetry readings and to get
them to listen, it's like I've got to have somebody
up here playing while I read.
Carroll: Yeah, that ecstatic youth energy that
poets rely on. I’m kind of at the point where I'm
in between that and the slower period of writing
you have to move into at a certain point.
FP: Right, right.
Carroll: These shards of that electrical energy just keep pulling at
you. I've been real blessed to get these novels, because I've never
had prose or stories before in third person fiction. I'm sick about
writing about my own life. At any rate. I have to just stick with that,
but these projects come up, I start doing music, and there is some
thing very exciting about it. I can't deny the fact that Patti (Smith)
getting out there and doing it and really doing it well, you know,
again...
FP: And being received amazingly.
Carroll: Yeah, that's what I mean. Going around and reading at colleges,
man, or being on a college radio station, I mention Patti Smith. The people
where I read, in like the question and answer thing, they think like I'm
talking about Patti Smyth.
FP: Of course.
Carroll: I'm sure that will change when her album comes out. There's
just something about her image and the frailty and the strength. She can
never be out of touch with what's happening because she's so completely
spaced out. I think I am happy that she is into it.
FP: / was ripping through Morrisroe's Mapplethorpe biography...
Carroll: Robert designated her... at a certain point, she made it a Rob
ert Mapplethorpe and semi-Patti Smith biography. And when I spoke to
her again, and she had made the change, I said, listen, when I was speaking
to you about Patti openly before, I really thought that was off the record
I didn't say anything that was bad, but ...
FP: In a biographer's hands, someone with an agenda, it's so easily mis
construed.
Can oil: I mean, if you see Robert from the outside, you didn't know the
certain joy that radiated. He had a really dark side. Obviously, a lot of
people met that dark side.
FP: She says Patti thought you the archetypal Rimbaud figure.
Carroll: You know, the drugs and things like that. But stylistically, we're
different. Sometimes I think Rimbaud was the end of modern poetry, and
everybody else is sweeping up
FP: Sorting through the debris. There's a passage in Forced Entries about
going to poetry readings and how uninspiring they are to sit through.
Carroll: I mean, in the old days, it wasn't spoken word. It was just po
etry. There are a lot of poets who I really like on the
page but who are boring reading. There are some
poets I can't stand on the page but who are damn
good when they read. Like the poetry slam, I
mean.
FP: Rhyme is very big on the slam scene.
Carroll: Is it?
FP: Yeah. What kind of stullare you gonna
do at the 40 Watt?
Carroll: That depends a lot on the en
ergy of the audience. Like if I just do
something off the top of my head, just a
germ of an idea and expand on it. It's hard
for me to read anything from these novels,
because taken out ol context it’s not
easy to read like a block. There's a
new poem section in Fear Of Dream
ing, and I’m sure I'll read some po
ems from that. I guess I'll read a lot
of new things.
Douglas A. Martin
Jim Carroll will speak at the 40 Watt
Friday, April 12.
Out of the ashes of Atlanta's Uncle Green comes 3 Lb.
Thrill, a big, nasty rock hand that has brought the craft of
songwriting to a levet Uncle Green never really reached. The
band’s Sony/57 Records debut is called Vulture, and it blows
the doors off any preconceived notions the listener might have.
When Uncle Green broke up, the four members still wanted to
play music, and couldn’t think of any other people they wanted
to play with. As a result, 3 Lb. Thrill has both the exciting
energy of a brand new band and the technical tightness of a
seasoned unit. Vulture sounds like a brash mix of Sugar, Matthew
Sweet, the Replacements and the fiery side of Uncle Green. It’s a
great redord, and as I witnessed in Austin last month, the band
rocks with a vengeance live as welt. If there’s any justice, these
guys will be huge soon.
Marc Pilvinsky
3 Lb. Thrill and Addison Blue play the 40 Watt Thursday, April 11.
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