Void of Course (Poets, Penguin) by Jim Carroll
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Book Reviews of Void of Course (Poets, Penguin)
Book Review: Wonderful...simply wonderful"(JC,Forced Entries)
Summary: 5 Stars
This book is a great book for avid JC readers and newer ones. Void of Course reinforces what a true poet Carroll really is.Book Review: Get IT!
Summary: 5 Stars
The best book of poems by Jim yet - very accessible - yet his imagery, metaphor and most of all, craft shine...Book Review: Great Choice!
Summary: 5 Stars
I loved this book. Insightful, funny and real....especially "Message left on an Answering Machine"Book Review: an older poet
Summary: 4 Stars
"If you haven't died by an age thought predetermined through the timing of your abuses and excesse, then what are you to do?" These words typed across the back of Carroll's "forced entries" resonate in his latest book of poems "Void of Course."(VOC)The book begins with the poem "8 fragments for Kurt Cobaine," which is remenisent of Frank O'hara's "The Day Lady Died." Argueably the crown Jewel to VOC, "8 Fragments" professes an erey mixture of wisdom and confussion surrounding Cobaine's suicide. The difficulty of being known as "a young poet" comes up again and again in his work and Carroll expresses the difficulty in the film "Gang of Souls."The other major poem of the book "While she's gone" contains the same confussion, so to, do shorter poems like "ruins." Although, Carroll's work in VOC is his best and most original to date, it is he himself who seems in danger of becoming the cliche of Great American writers. In the way someone once described American literature, "A varitable who's who list of self destruction."And yet it's ironic that the poetry of his youth, which "kept [him] alive above any wounds," has created a new wound. I find that psychological dissonance and writing poetry go to togeather hand in hand; unfortunately, this seems to be the type of ironic neurossis with which only another poet can relate.Book Review: He swims deep in the rich waters of his former addiction.
Summary: 4 Stars
The words of a man who has walked down the long and very dark corridor of heroin addiction, and yet managed to emerge out the the other side into the sunlight, and live to tell about it. "Jukebox" and "8 Fragments for Kurt Cobain" are especially choice. Several of these pieces appear spoken but set to music on the CD "Pools of Mercury". Another excellent volumn.