Fear of Dreaming

Description

Carroll, a diarist and rock performer, is best known for his coming-of-age memoir The Basketball Diaries, which became an instant classic when it was first published in 1978 and then a national bestseller when a film version of the book was released in 1995. Carroll initially made his reputation as a poet, and has won acclaim and comparisons to everyone from Rimbaud to Frank O’Hara for his delicate yet hallucinatory imagery.

This volume of poetry collects selections from Jim Carroll’s Living at the Movies, which was published in 1973 when he was twenty-two, and The Book of Nods, released in 1986. Fear of Dreaming also includes pieces previously unpublished in book form, including “Curtis’s Charm,” a vignette set in New York City’s Central Park about a man convinced he is a victim of black magic, and poetic tributes to Robert Mapplethorpe and Ted Berrigan.

“His poems’ urgent, obsessive metaphors pose tensely against their cool, streetwise surface voice, charging them with an electricity that’s at once disturbing, sexual, religious, and psychological.”—Tom Clark, San Francisco Chronicle Book ReviewFear of DreamingLiving at the Movies
Blue Poles
The Distances
The Narrows
August
Traffic
Styro
Morning
Next Door
The Green Bus
The Loft
In the Valley
The Burning of Bustin’s Island
Love Rockets
The Other Garden
Heroin
Poem
Birthday Poem
Seltzer
Living at the Movies
Your Daughter
Fragment: Little N.Y. Ode
Cough Syrup
One Flight Up
How Relaxed
For Ezra Pound
The Blue Pill
Blood Bridge
Poem on My Son’s Birthday
Crossed Wires
Leaving N.Y.C.
A Fragment
Vacation
A Short Reminder
Gliding
To a Poetess
The Cosmopolitian Sense
Growing Up
Poem
Cold Faces
To the Secret Poets of Kansas
Jet Fizzle
Sea Battle
An Early Morning Crucifixion
Invisible Sleep
Sure . . .
Fear and Trembling
After St. John of the Cross
Little Ode on St. Anne’s Day
Chop Chop
Silver Mirrors
Highway Report
Dog Crunch
Love Poem (Later)
California Poem
Withdrawal Letter
Maybe I’m Amazed
Mercury Clouds
New Year 1970
Midnight
Prell
Back Home
For Sue’s Birthday
Song
Poem
Love Story
In This Room Particularly
The Tenth Try
Love Poem
For Your Birthday
Poem
On the Rush
Words from Babylon
Torn Canvas
The Birth and Death of the Sun
It Doesn’t Matter
Chelsea May
Savage Bubbles
Paregoric Babies
An Apple at Dawn

The Book of Nods
Trained Monkey
With van Gogh
A Poet Dies
Homage to Gerard Manley Hopkins
Watching the Schoolyard
Guitar Voodoo
My Father’s Vacation
Quality
Post Office
The Ice Capades
“The Academy of the Future Is Opening Its Doors . . .”
Parting the Reeds
The Lakes of Sligo
Lenses
A Beach Landing
Zeno’s Final Paradox
Paraguay
The Safe Corridor
Rimbaud Scenes:
Rimbaud’s Tooth Ache
Rimbaud Sees the Dentist
Waking in a Painter’s Loft in Paris
Rimbaud Running Guns
Rimbaud Pays Homage to Saint Helena
Confederate Lake
One Hundred Years of Boredom
Silent Money
Scouting
Five Irresponsible Students of Zen
The Buddha Reveals Himself
Me, Myself, and I
Teeth Marks
Reaching France
In the Law Library
In the Capital
Stepping Out of M.O.M.A.
Days
The Transient
Just Visiting

New York City Variations

Poems 1973-1985
Poem
Winter’s Age
For Elizabeth
Prologue
M. Verdoux, The Wife Killer
A Night Outing
Wing and Claw
The Ad Man’s Daughter
Saint Theresa
In Four Seasons
Dead Salamander’s Song
Painting by Flashlight
Heroes
Nightclubbing
Post-Modernism
The Caves
Judging the Pageant
El Hombre del Ombre
A Window in Cherry Valley
On Tour
Dueling the Monkey
A Child Growing Up with the Sun
For John Donne
Eugene, Oregon
Our Desires
My Debt
On Susan’s Birthday
Poem
Dresden to Chesapeake Bay
In the Deep Green Vase
Poem
The New Death
The Runners
3 Short Poems:
Poem
Compassion
Cinco de Mayo
Things That Fly
For Robert Smithson
Borges Death Mask
The Desert Casino
Music Television
Sleeplessness
In the Gears

New York 1989-1993
Curtis’s Charm
A Perfect Stranger
I Am Not Kurt Schwitters
Calm Under Fire
Fear of Dreaming
Poem
Epiphany
Inauguration Day
In Time, AIDS
Song
Evening News
Praying Mantis
Micky
To the National Endowment for the Arts
Coda

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.US

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