Void of Course (Penguin Poets)
In 1973, at the age of twenty-three, <b>Jim Carroll</b> burst upon the poetry scene with his first collection, <b>Living at the Movies</b>, a book of vivid and inventive verse that won him comparisons to everyone from <b>Arthur Rimbaud</b> to <b>Frank O'Hara</b>. <p>Carroll's first new book of poetry in more than a decade, <b>Void of Course</b> presents work composed over the last two years. His major themes--love, friendship, desire, time and memory, and, above all, the ever-present city--emerge in an atmosphere where dream and reality mingle on equal terms. These seventy-seven poems range from graphic, sensuous shorter pieces to edgy stream-of-consciousness prose poems to longer, more contemplative works such as "While She's Gone," an eerie tour de force of longing over a departed lover. <b>Void of Course</b> establishes that Carroll's power and purity of vision are stronger than ever.</p>