A Conversation with Poet, Paul Carroll

I was privileged to meet and know, for a time, a great poet, Paul Carroll. Dead now. He was a big, brash Irishman, full of charm, bombast, contradictions, addictions, darkness and light. Perhaps most of all he was a mentor to many. His publication, Big Table was the first in this country to give space to the poets whose voices have so come to characterize our age: Kerouac, Burroughs, Ginsberg, Corso, Snider, etc. He was made to suffer for his importunity by the powers that be and was proud of his many scars - none on them on his back, as Zorba would say. He was also a beloved teacher and many felt his loving influence.

Way back in 1961, I attended a reading that celebrated the initiation of Chicago Choice, a poetry magazine he co-edited. The headlined poet reading that afternoon was e.e. cummings in the flesh! Later when I returned to my studio, I read in the magazine, Paul Carroll's poem, "You, Gulls, Three Ghosts". It moved me so greatly that I found myself returning to it over and over again over the years.

Years later, when I produced a video about Paul, I asked him about the poem. His eyes grew misty and he pulled an ancient picture out of his wallet. It was one of those accidental photographs taken by a wandering commercial street photographer so popular back then. They would snap pictures of people out on the town and hand them an envelope they would then send in and, for a fee, have returned the picture they had snapped. It was a picture of Junie from the poem. He never forgot her. She was the one that got away.

Here is the poem.

You, Gulls, Three Ghosts by Paul Carroll




Hard

spring

here. Sun seldom

sleet &

the rawboned winds.




But I see you in Paris, dear,

rummaging around the Flea Market

as if you're searching for that Russian petticoat

embroidered by your mother for her wedding-day.




Or in a café,

sketching: trying to catch

the flip and sneer,

and the quick grace

Of the Paris rhetoric

around you.

Or in the Luxembourg-

a mild breeze crinkling through the tufts of buds

& your dark hair.




But seven months of separation

can turn affection to a photograph-

no flesh and blood

to it. Like the dream I had two nights ago

which I cant seem to shake:

Somehow I was hooting in my highschool stadium.

Clammy. Drzzly. Almost spring.

Beneath the hometeam goal post

six men in stovepipe hats

drew bead with dueling pistols.

But they shot blanks. Puffs of smoke

became a flock of frantic birds

scooping above me as I waded through alfalfa

somewhere in the Blue ridge Mountains of Virginia.

My arm

(or was it yours?)

bound in a sling

flung around

the shoulder of my friend

Frank Guest.

I think I felt ecstatic. But a tractor,

chugging, muffled what I had to say to him.

Arm became

an empty

flapping sleeve.

Or ghost.

Or bird maybe.




On the way to work this morning

I walked along the Oak St. beach

a wedge of fog

obscured the traffic

& the lake. Suddenly

dead friends began to flutter at the margin of my thoughts

just like the gulls above, sweet,

invisible

but for the swoosh

of wings. That handful:




a girl named Ruth I knew in college,

the sleet-bit look about her eyes

so like this spring hard,

uncompromising in the knowledge of

how niggardly are our attempts to touch.

Or try to talk

Together,




And frank. Now a photograph like her.

How stubbornly he would insist

the age we live in is corrupt, lacking

(as perhaps it does)

any traffic with the preternatural.

Still. His love was ingrown, too

fiercely reticent. As if,

despite the good soil his intellect was rooted in,

he secretly believed the God he got from Plato & Augustine

was ignorant and stunted as his alcoholic father.




Kit Carney, too:

lost in the multiplication of his public self

frightened by the silence in his heart.




And you, Junie. Last & most.

Sometimes I think you are the blood

circulating in my arm. But even as I write, dear,

I cannot help but wonder if

even at our best

we too don't cultivate

that curious corruption

I sought for in the others:




the unspoken guarantee that

regardless of how firm this present love

it will become a gull abandoned in the fog.

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[bboldt2]

Thanks, parinda27,

So true. Some friends and I were sitting around this evening talking about teachers we have known. Not all doctors are healers and not all teachers are masters. I am lucky to have a master poet for a teacher now. I wish I had Paul for a teacher—even for a part of a semester. I was fortunate to have known him for a short time as a friend. His influence will last me a lifetime. Thanks for sharing your experience.

Peace,

Bob Boldt

[parinda27]

i was in paul's class in 84 or 85 and in that first class period he recited a short poem called 'deer heart' by some ancient poet and i knew in an instant here was a man with a spiritual commitment to this art (poetry) which i had had at that time in fact it was that instant of knowledge that made me realize that learning from spiritual masters is different from learning in books and you don't need to be there a semester to gain the required knowledge just a moment or two suffices sometimes

[bboldt2]

@parinda27 So true. Some friends and I were sitting around this evening talking about teachers we have known. Not all doctors are healers and not all teachers are masters. I am lucky to have a master poet for a teacher now. I wish I had Paul for a teacher—even for a part of a semester. I was fortunate to have known him for a short time as a friend. His influence will last me a lifetime. Thanks for sharing your experience.

Peace,

Bob Boldt

[bboldt2]

Thanks for the praise for the "Conversation." I am preparing commentary for a more complete whole interview elsewhere on my YouTube site. I enjoyed your poem and felt the influence of Paul's work throughout. I have taken to the art myself of late--due in no small part to his inspiration. Keep me posted as to the progress of your Paul Carroll Blog. I would like to contribute.

Peace

Bob Boldt deboldt(at)gmail.com

[cnolan1972]

So awesome to see this video. I took classes from Professor Carroll at UIC from 1989-1991 and he wrote my recommendation to Trinity College, Dublin (I got in!). What a wonderful blast from the past. This brings me back to his wonderful 8 a.m. classes I never missed. He has had a huge influence in my life.

[jzguzlowski]

I took classes from Carroll in the 60s at the U of I. He was some poet, and a great teacher. I wrote a poem to thank him for what he taught me.

[bboldt2]

I presume you are Luke.

I regret I could not put the whole untruncated video of your dad up on the Internet. I do have a VHS copy of the whole interview that JoAnn Baumgartner produced.

Paul has had a profound influence on my life, first through his poems and later through the face to face connection we formed around the making of JoAnns video.

Peace,

Bob Boldt