Crasses et Voluptés

Jim Carrol- Patti was complaining to me that she couldn't get another reading at the Poetry Project-you know, "They're just jealous, everybody liked me that night," which I think was true. So the next reading I had I told them that I wanted to do a reading with Patti. The day of the reading I was in Rye, New York, staying at my friend Willie's house, who was a character in The Basketball Diaries. Willie was like one of the few heads in that area, and that morning the fucking sheriff of Rye decides he's gonna pull a bust on him. I just happened to be there when they raided his house at dawn. The only thing they found were hash pipes with residue, but they brought us in for that. We had to go to the jail there-but I ordered one of the best meals I ever had from this Italian restaurant, and then they took us down to White Plains to book us, but then the judge threw it out. By then it was around midnight. Fortunately we didn't have to spend the night in jail. But it wasn't that bad, for jail, it was kinda nice, actually. But I had missed the reading. Nobody knew where I was, and Patti got up to read and kind of prefaced her reading with, "Well, we all know that Jim has his problems ... " But I think that Anne Waldman and everybody at the Poetry Project were really pissed-you know, "Jim's just so unreliable!" 

So Patti said something like, "You love the fact that he's a rebel, but when it gets in your face and bothers you, then you don't like it so much do you? Well, I say, Here's to ]im Carroll ... " But it also gave her the whole show, so she could dig that. I was good enough to get busted and give her twice as much air time. 

Patti Smith: The St. Mark's poets are so namby-pamby, they're frauds, they write about, "Today at 9:15, I shot speed with Brigid ..." They're real cute about putting it in a poem, but if Jim Carroll comes into the church stoned and throws up, that's not a poem to them-that's not cool. If you could play with it in your poetry, that's okay, but if you're really with it, that's something else-they don't want to face it. Jim Carroll was the St. Mark's Poetry Project's chance to have something real among them. Jim Carroll is one of America's true poets. I mean, he is a true poet. He's a junkie. He's bisexual. He's been fucked by every male and female genius in America. He's been fucked over by all those people. He lives all over. He lives a disgusting life. Sometimes you have to pull him out of a gutter. He's been in prison. He's a total fuck-up. But what great poet wasn't? It kills me that at twenty-three Jim Carroll wrote all his best poems-the same year of his life as Rim baud did. He had the same intellectual quality and bravado as Rimbaud. But they blackballed him because he fucked up. He didn't come to his poetry reading. He was in jail. Good for him. They said, "Oh well, we can't ask him to do poetry readings anymore." It was ridiculous.