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Article: Jim Carroll's brilliant light goes out suddenly
- Article from:
- The Irish Times
- Article date:
- September 17, 2009
CopyrightCopyright 2009 The Irish Times. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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AMERICA AT LARGE: Poet, diarist, teenage basketball prodigy,
heroin addict. He was a friend of mine, and he died, writes GEORGE
KIMBALL
SO MANY friends had drawn their last breath over the past few
months that more than once I've found the lyrics to Jim Carroll's
People Who Died rolling around in my head.
Then, a few days ago, the author of People Who Died died.
He was 60, and the most remarkable thing about that is that most
of us who knew him in the 1960s would have made it no better than
even money that Jim would live to be 20.
Jim's reputation had preceded him before I'd met him. The poet
Ted Berrigan had told me about this wild, red-haired kid who'd
started hanging around the Poetry ...