Jim Carroll has died. This is turning into a depressing year of lost talent. This one hits a little closer to home for me than any other. Although my own poetic interests have diverged over the years from the New York/Beat style Jim wrote in, he probably influenced me more than any other writer early on and I’ve always held a special regard for him. His music also had a huge impact on me and I still think he penned some of the best songs to come out of the New York scene. I’ve been looking forward to his always-in-progress first novel The Petting Zooand hoped he might make it out to do a reading near me soon so I could say hello as I’d always missed him when he came around. Perhaps he at least finished a draft of his novel and it’ll be published along with the rest of his finished writings in the near future. Not much else to say now. Time for some radio silence. Bye, Jim.
