Organic Trains
n.p. [New York]: n.d. [1967]. First edition. [20] pp. Staple bound wrappers. Some tanning to wrappers, else near fine.
Carroll’s first book, published when he was sixteen. Apparently about 500 copies were printed, many of which were lost by the printer. OCLC locates less than ten copies.
Ted Berrigan wrote in Culture Hero 1.5, 1969, about reading Carroll’s book after Carroll pressed it upon him outside of Gem Spa in 1967: “ORGANIC TRAINS is a tremendous experience. Most of the poems were written when Jim was 14, 15 and 16. I’ve never seen anything like it. I can say Rimbaud, but that doesn’t bring in how American Jim Carroll is, and a critic might, and probably would, say, O’Hara; but Frank O’Hara never wrote anywhere near this well into well into his 20’s. The poems in the book are new, and they are now (still). If there is to be another “New American Poetry”, and there is, as the fine dust settles over the “New American Poetry 1945-60”, Jim Carroll is the first truly new American poet. His imagination is as natural to him as the evidence of his senses, and, in fact, its light transforms that always slightly belated information directly back into now; no greater pleasure!”. Item #2613
Price: $1,250.00