tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post5803618606179016952..comments2024-01-28T03:56:39.351-08:00Comments on TOM CLARK: For A Fallen IdolUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-43475093031022669272012-02-10T06:14:16.353-08:002012-02-10T06:14:16.353-08:00Curtis, about the photos, I thought so too. Gave m...Curtis, about the photos, I thought so too. Gave me bad dreams.<br /><br />Of course one prefers the happier memories.<br /><br />(The title of the post, of course, remembers the movie of the same name.)TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-71673958023361085992012-02-10T03:58:22.819-08:002012-02-10T03:58:22.819-08:00This is beautifully formed (it’s tempting but imp...This is beautifully formed (it’s tempting but impossible to select favorite lines, but I’d like to say that using the Fallen Idol image as you have is very powerful), moving and seems so real, sincere and inevitable. This is how we feel about our friends.<br /><br />I’m kind of glad that I managed to keep Jim Carroll’s celebrity at distance during the “brightest” part of his public career. Knowing his history and associations as a poet, I didn’t want to let the music business p.r. aspect of things annoy me. In the same way I detest non-poet rock stars occasionally publishing (with great fanfare) books of verse, I tend to distrust non-musicians trying to compose, record and perform music with corporate backing.<br /><br />In Jim Carroll’s case, however, there were some happy surprises – even radio surprises. A friend of ours played guitar in his band for a couple of years and mostly enjoyed the experience and was proud of the work they did. He and Carroll co-wrote a terrific song called “Differing Touch,” which had lyrics that were very good, subtle and…..poetic . It sounds like no other song I’ve ever heard. <br /><br />Publishing those photos was a horrible thing to do.ACravanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00315707533118640284noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-3658578883167858172012-02-09T04:04:23.461-08:002012-02-09T04:04:23.461-08:00Yes, disturbance. Lethe.
One gets the curious ima...Yes, disturbance. Lethe.<br /><br />One gets the curious image of Charon as the P. R. guy ferrying the sepia family army across that sea of crocodile tears.<br /><br />Jim, it should be remembered, toward the end had his own weekly small "breakfast club," where he could get together with trusted friends and be, as it were, himself.<br /><br />(Indeed it's occurred to me late on that to die over one's work, whatever it was/is/may have been, is at least an act of fealty, when it appears perhaps little else good is to be said.)TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-34223067838701570782012-02-09T02:52:28.503-08:002012-02-09T02:52:28.503-08:00Disturbing poem/image. We are all Lethe bound, but...Disturbing poem/image. We are all Lethe bound, but as you say, it’s not much of a consolation prize.vazambam (Vassilis Zambaras)https://www.blogger.com/profile/14515165428574974933noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-70934983933969492592012-02-09T01:11:27.878-08:002012-02-09T01:11:27.878-08:00Ray,
Bukowski had an unerringly accurate view of ...Ray,<br /><br />Bukowski had an unerringly accurate view of human nature (alas).<br /><br />About this:<br /><br />"...contemplating death often. Not suicide, fortunately. I mean rather the shortness of life.<br /><br />"I've always felt a sense of urgency in my own life, to get what I need to do done sooner; because I fear there will not be a later."<br /><br />These words echo my own sentiments precisely. One can deny the inevitable all one wishes, still every minute it inches closer, and lo! every time one glances away from the immediate moment, there appear fewer and fewer grains left in the "later" compartment of the hourglass. <br /><br />I have found that, as one sinks into the eighth decade, there is little respite in these considerations, nor much solace in the alleged mercies of forgetfulness.<br /><br />(An anxious confused muddle hardly qualifies as enlightenment!)TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-89357986456037278032012-02-08T21:51:32.038-08:002012-02-08T21:51:32.038-08:00"...it could also be put down to sensationali..."...it could also be put down to sensationalism, muckraking, malice, disrespect, or mere lack of taste."<br /><br />As Charles Bukowski said of people:<br /><br />"They want you to be wrong just so they can be right."<br /><br />I found the poem posted here quite touched a tender nerve, Tom. I find myself contemplating death often. Not suicide, fortunately. I mean rather the shortness of life. <br /><br />I've always felt a sense of urgency in my own life, to get what I need to do done sooner; because I fear there will not be a later.u.v.ray.https://www.blogger.com/profile/02866397025200956617noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-16155824812783368682012-02-08T10:30:53.535-08:002012-02-08T10:30:53.535-08:00Steve,
Those were the days, so many, it seemed th...Steve,<br /><br />Those were the days, so many, it seemed there would always be more, forever, out on that little strip of land protruding from and in almost every way disconnected from, the rest of the continent... and then...TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-9120889482437148202012-02-08T10:26:12.104-08:002012-02-08T10:26:12.104-08:00Tom,
My memory/interior photo image is of Jim wal...Tom,<br /><br />My memory/interior photo image is of Jim walking with his little dog down Brighton toward the beach, many days, in front of our house, beautiful reddish brown hair, a solitary figure out for a walk -- never spoke to him, Michael Wolfe had just published The Basketball Diaries, those were the days. . . <br /><br />2.8<br /><br />cloudless blue white sky above shadowed<br />plane of ridge, blue jay on pine branch<br />in foreground, sound of wave in channel<br /><br /> order of events for example,<br /> this made before then<br /><br /> appeared, the second before<br /> that, had not started<br /><br />lines of waves breaking across channel,<br />circular green pine on tip of sandspitSTEPHEN RATCLIFFEhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12339481653546188412noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-90843665925488553872012-02-08T08:03:14.019-08:002012-02-08T08:03:14.019-08:00Nin,
Whatever advancing arm of senior dementia ha...Nin,<br /><br />Whatever advancing arm of senior dementia has been entering my dreamlife lately caught me around the heart a few nights ago by flooding the dreamscene with this strange narrative featuring a terrible mummified version of our late friend the poet Jim Carroll, alas dead before his time. (Whatever "one's time" is...)<br /><br />In the dream it was not the "real" sweet, charming, funny, shy, dear Jim of earlier days but the image of a ghoulish skeletal figure created/captured as a kind of spook-spectre by paparazzi in his rather desolate final years, and posted -- grotesquely, unkindly, cruelly I thought -- by Ron Silliman... not once, mind you, but twice within five days... while the body was yet warm, as they say.<br /><br /><a href="http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2009/09/jim-carroll-1950-2009.html" rel="nofollow">Jim Carroll: from Silliman obit 9/14/09</a><br /><br /><a href="http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2009_09_13_archive.html" rel="nofollow">Jim Carroll: from Silliman 9/19/09</a><br /><br />I suppose showing someone in the worst possible light can be put down to "historical objectivity". Then again, it could also be put down to sensationalism, muckraking, malice, disrespect, or mere lack of taste.<br /><br />So yo, "whatever", have a nice day....<br /><br />Anyhow, those two terrifyingly awful pictures have since then become, as the horrid contempo-cliché has it, "iconic" -- near neighbour to "awesome".<br /><br />If you go to that idiot trash-bin Google Images and type in "Jim Carroll", those are the two pictures our Mommybot offers first, to remember this poet by.<br /><br />(My own memories of the man, along with photos not taken in the mortuary lobby, can be found <a href="http://tomclarkblog.blogspot.com/2009/09/jim-carroll.html" rel="nofollow">TC: Jim Carroll 9/14/09</a>.)TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-9902556211638005532012-02-08T07:24:11.517-08:002012-02-08T07:24:11.517-08:00What a surreal dream and a perfect image to go wit...What a surreal dream and a perfect image to go with it. <br /> <br />I love the strange funeral scene in what looks like neon lighting, even in a black and white photo . . .<br /><br />And the ending - "the faceless army of keepers." <br />That gives me a chill.Nin Andrewshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12643167108589844026noreply@blogger.com