You may have heard of the movie The Basketball Diaries. And if you’ve heard of it, you probably know that Leo DiCaprio starred in this angst-ridden flick way back in the day (1995, in case you were wondering). The character he played was that of real-life poet and punk rocker (and one-time heroin addict) Jim Carroll, the author of The Basketball Diaries.
Carroll died on September 11, 2009 (see the NY Times obit), which had me pulling his books of poetry off the shelf after too many years of neglect. I discovered Carroll in grad school and was instantly taken with his occasional spare form and unexpected choice of words, but there was one particular poem that struck me: 8 Fragments for Kurt Cobain. A small excerpt: 
The words kept getting smaller and smaller
Until
Separated from their music
Each letter spilled out into a cartridge
Which fit only in the barrel of a gun
(from Void of Course: Poems 1994-1997, by Jim Carroll, ©1998)
When I first read this poem I was grieving the loss of a friend who’d taken his own life. It resonated with me. Reading it now, 10 years later, the lines are just as melancholy, their message the same, but the chord it strikes with me is a little different. A decade ago I thought, “Yes! Finally someone who understands how I feel.” Now I read the same verses and think how selfish people like Kurt Cobain and my friend were, forcing the wordsmiths they left behind to have to try and describe their feelings after the violent death of someone they loved or admired.
And that’s the beauty of poetry – it’s intensely personal. To the writer. To the reader. And it’s meaning can change with time or place or experience. Which makes it all the better. You can read and reread poetry and almost always find another meaning, find once-overlooked lines that are now worth falling in love with. You can write about one experience 100 different ways.
Carroll was a big fan of poets like Frank O’Hara, Allen Ginsburg, and Jack Kerouac… a generation of eclectic men we’ll soon cover here, along with the Beat movement as a whole.
Further reading: The fansite CatholicBoy.com offers a pretty in-depth look at Carroll’s life and work.
Get the book: Void of Course (pictured above)
Do you have one specific poem or verse that you personally identify with or that tugs at your heart strings?
Novel Novice 