i picked this up randomly, though i should have learned by now that picking up poetry in that manner isn’t the best approach for me. Jim Carroll also wrote The Basketball Diaries, an autobiographical coming of age/drug addiction story that was later turned into a movie starring Leonard DiCaprio. i never read the book, but i do remember seeing the movie and probably the book is much better.

this collection of poetry spans from Carroll’s first “aboveground” book, Living at the Movies, to “newer works” (from 1989-1993). the poems of the first book were by far the ones that caught me the most; something about them seems more sincere or maybe it’s the more obvious backdrop of new york city that caught me. i had to skip most of the poems from The Book of Nods, as it read pretty much like a recounting of several months of dreams—i like writing down dreams and reading them later and occasionally i like reading other people’s dreams, but i think only in small quantities. the “New York City Variations” felt a little too amorphous and not enough new york. i started into “Poems 1973–1985” and just wasn’t interested enough to keep going. somehow even when he’s trying to be dirty, it just comes off as kind of lame.

a review says that “Living at the Movies” is reminiscent of Rimbaud, so maybe i will just read Rimbaud.