Fear of Dreaming

The Selected Poems of Jim Carroll

Second Edition, 1998
By Jim Carroll

Fear of Dreaming
Second Edition
By: Jim Carroll
Published: 1998
Publisher: Penguin Books
Length: 273 pages
Format: paperback
Cover design: Gail Belenson
Cover painting: Paul Klee, Picture Album, 1937

(See Wikipedia)

Fear of
Dreaming collects all of Carroll’s poems from Living at
the Movies and most of The Book of Nods. While some
of the poems originally published in TheBook of Nods are
not included in Fear of Dreaming, one of the “New
YorkCity Variations” originally left out of The Book of
Nods can be found on page191 of Fear of Dreaming; this
piece was originally published in Paris Review in 1985.
In addition, the final section of the book, “New Work 1989-1993,”offers
fifteen new poems and prose works. Among these are the short story
“Curtis’sCharm” (which first appeared in Paris Review
in 1993 and was adapted to film
in 1996 by Canadian director John L’Ecuyer), and the poems “Fear
of Dreaming,” “Praying Mantis,” and “To theNational
Endowment for the Arts.”

Fear of
Dreaming does not collect the poems from Carroll’s first book,
OrganicTrains, and it also excludes the following from
The Book of Nods:

From “California Variations”: Works
from pages 91 and 93-111; (Note:
Three “California Variations” are included included
in the “New York City Variations” section of Fear
of Dreaming; these are on pages 192-194.)
From “Poems 1973-1985”: “Wedding
in White” (BN 126); “Ghost
Town” (BN 128); “Bad
Signs” (BN 130); “Poem”
(BN 132); “Rites
of Arctic Passage” (BN 135); “Suspicions”
(BN 139); “Sophia”
(BN 142); “Borders”
(BN 149); “The
Novena Tide” (BN 150); “Letter
to Sister” (BN 153); “This
Spanish Town” (BN 159)

Unique to this Edition

The second
edition of Fear of Dreaming contains substative changes
and corrections to “Curtis’s Charm.” In the first edition,
an overzealous editor changed the term psycho-noetic to psycho-poetic (p. 253); this has been corrected in
the second edition. In the second edition, Carroll has also deleted
the last sentence of the paragraph at the top of page 254: “If
I did have a staff, however, I would neither break nor bury it,
and as for the Magus books, I had no intention of drowning them.”

Fear of Dreaming

Unique to this Edition

See Also