My name is Jeremiah, I am 32-year-old poet/writer living homeless in Southern West Virginia.
(I kind of wrote something along the lines of what everyone is doing in this thread, but i want to be sure to participate.)
So....Despite being a writer I always find it difficult to adequately explain my connection to the handful of artists that really hit that fucking spot in the gut.
I was already a serious Poet when I discovered Jim Carroll. I have no formal education with poetry; I come from the school of Kurt Cobain, where passion and authenticity becomes the reward when you repeatedly receive rejection notices on submittable.
"8 FRAGMENTS FOR KURT COBAIN," was how I was introduced to Jim; and I watched his MTV spoken word session, and I was totally fucked up, man....I thought, Holy fucking shit, he is intense.
Quickly, I began my Jim Carroll journey. And....it totally blew me away, dude. The way he somehow balanced an atmosphere of post-modern culture with intense imagery that left phrases in your head for days is to this day something only he could do. His abilities to stop the camera on a specific, everyday scene (such as soaking in a red bathrtub while the INDIAN LOGO STAYS ON STATIC-EY SCREEN) and eject the film, inspecting it by layers of grain, is something only our Irish artist could do. Others tried; and many were great poets; such as Berrigan, but it wasn't Jim.
Jim is like............well......
He is like "THE ACUMALATION OF REEFS PILING UP, ONE OVER THE OTHER; OR A BEAUTIFUL SICK BIRD THAT DETERMINES THE WEATHER FOR EACH DAY; OR AN ANALOG JUKEBOX THAT REFUSES TO BE FORGOTTEN----IT HAS STYLE, DIG? OR MAYBE, JIM IS LIKE A POWERFUL SPELL OF WITCHY VOODOO IN THE PARK; WHERE SUCH SCENERY SURROUNDS YOU, BUT YOU FOCUS ON THE HEP-C YELLOW EYES OF A CRANKED OUT ADDICT.
NO, JIM CARROLL IS LIKE RECLINING IN AN ARMCHAIR, INHALING THE DEATH OF THE DAY; WHILE A FUCKING BIBLICAL RAVEN DESCRIBES TO YOU the cage time square has you in..... IT......HE, JIM CARROLL, IS LIKE THE MOST DROWSEY, BEAUTIFUL NOD.