Beat Punks

It was the first time I had ever seen anybody do that, and I was fascinated, the way a passing driver is fascinated by a car crash.

Drugs did not make Bill go away, when I knew him; for the most part, they made him more present.

“It is necessary to travel,” he said, “it is not necessary to live,” meaning that a life without travel of the spiritual, psychic, intellectual kind is not worth living.

He has the ability to zoom in on the heart of things.

Jim Carroll is one of America’s true poets. I mean, he is a true poet. It kills me he’s twenty-three, he wrote all his best poems the same year of his life as Rimbaud did. He had the same intellectual quality and bravado as Rimbaud. He’s a junkie. He’s bisexual. He’s been fucked by every male and female genius in America. He’s been fucked over by all those people. He lives all over.

Jim Carroll is one of America’s true poets. I mean, he is a true poet. It kills me he’s twenty-three, he wrote all his best poems the same year of his life as Rimbaud did. He had the same intellectual quality and bravado as Rimbaud. He’s a junkie. He’s bisexual. He’s been fucked by every male and female genius in America. He’s been fucked over by all those people. He lives all over.

He lives a disgusting life. Sometimes you have to pull him out of a gutter. He’s been in prison. He’s a total fuck-up. But what great poet wasn’t?

BOCKRIS: Do you think you’re a genius?

SMITH: I’m not very intelligent.

BOCKRIS: But genius is something else. So you agree, right?

SMITH: Yeah, yeah. It’s like when I was a little kid I always knew that I had some special kind of thing inside me. I mean I wasn’t very attractive. I wasn’t very verbal. I wasn’t very smart in school. I wasn’t anything that showed physically to the world that I was something special but I had this tremendous hope all the time, you know, I had this tremendous spirit that kept me going no matter how fucked up I was. Just had this kind of light inside me that kept spurring me on.