{"id":4030,"date":"2022-01-10T22:17:50","date_gmt":"2022-01-11T06:17:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8000\/?page_id=4030"},"modified":"2025-05-24T19:29:40","modified_gmt":"2025-05-25T02:29:40","slug":"biography-of-a-poem","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/research\/academic-studies-of-jim-carroll\/biography-of-a-poem\/","title":{"rendered":"Biography of a Poem: “Sick Bird\u201d by Jim Carroll"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Cassie Carter
CatholicBoy.com 28 April 2004<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I need to figure out a way to make this page accessible. Any ideas<\/a>?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In my scholarly work on Jim Carroll I have always taken particular interest in the ways in which Carroll’s works differ from one printing to another. He is a very careful and meticulous writer who tends to keep rewriting, reworking, and recycling individual pieces, often over periods of several years. For the most part, the only evidence of this process is in the work he has published in literary magazines prior to collecting them in books (see the primary bibliography<\/a> on this website). But Carroll is also perpetually on tour, reading his work to live audiences in bars, clubs, and colleges, and testing out new works-in-progress. With the help of my own hand-held tape recorder and generous friends giving me copies of their bootleg videos and audiotapes, I have been able to start constructing a sort of history of Carroll’s works-in-progress as they grow from initial idea to their polished, final form (if there is such a thing).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The poem “Sick Bird,” published in Carroll’s 1998 book Void of Course<\/em> (pages 24-26), is the first piece I have been able to watch unfold from birth to final publication. Carroll’s revision process in this poem is quite dramatic!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first time I saw this poem was on February 21, 1996, in Bowling Green, Ohio, when Jim wrote out in longhand “something” for me to put on the website. The “something” was part of a new poem he was working on. The verse is below (see also the handwritten version<\/a>). Until I find an earlier version, I will refer to this piece as “phase one” and display it in red<\/mark>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Phase One:<\/em> UNTITLED
Bowling Green, Ohio
2\/21\/96<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Listen to Carroll read this<\/strong>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Phase Two:<\/em><\/strong> UNTITLED
Minneapolis, MN
6\/18\/96<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Listen to Carroll read this<\/strong>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Phase Three:<\/em><\/strong> UNTITLED
Minneapolis, MN
9\/27\/97<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The positions we use when making love
Determine the next day’s weather<\/mark><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tomorrow it will rain<\/mark>
Then heat lightning by evening<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every time the telephone rings
A green sea turtle dies<\/mark>
And a phlegmatic guilt chants across your day<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A butterfly on the Nile bank sucks the saline fluid from a
crocodile’s eye
Awakening
the beast whose rising tail changes slightly the course of the river
Causing a short bridge of rotting acacia wood to fall under the weight of a yellow Fiat
Whose passengers are fortunately unharmed<\/mark><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A blond woman with a silver tongue stud and gold rings
Above her left eye lights a cigarette with a candle
In the VIP lounge of a club in Minneapolis
And the candle drips wax to the red carpet, somehow causing
On the nearest body of water<\/mark> a lone fisherman
To slip on some odd substance, falling overboard and drowned
Eventually eaten by his own propeller
While a child from a lake tribe
Kneeling in his canoe
Watches in distance and mist
Unable to do a thing for him
He mutters, “That poor man,”
And paddles through the reeds
Skimming the surface with a plank
Continuing to harvest wild rice from the surface of Glacier Lake<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A popular character actress removes her Emerald brooch
After a banquet to raise money
For the twin benefits of Los Angeles runaways
And the Dalai Lama’s return to Tibet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By her simple actions,
undoing the clasp
The Dailai Lama stubs his left foot on a cabinet in his room
At the San Francisco Zen Center’s guest house, 800 miles up the coastline
Causing alarm among the Roshi and initiates, and a marlin-blue swelling
On the big toe of the gentle Lama, who meditates the pain to Maya<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While in a cluttered shop in the thin streets of Milan, Italy,
Its floor filled with rosewood shavings
The air cramped with Oak dust,
The man who built the cabinet
On which the Dalai Lama’s foot was stubbed
Slumps over his workbench with a cerebral hemorrhage.
He is dead.
It had been growing a long while in his mind.
It was simply a matter of time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And a young Norwegian film student
Decides to title his short film
It Was Simply a Matter of Time.
It has nothing to do
With time, however, nor the dead
Italian cabinet maker, nor the Dalai Lama’s foot<\/mark><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A mosquito sucks the blood
of a post-Soviet Baltic girl
And she falls in love with a balding Armenian
Who assures her that only girls with strong sexual drives are chosen by these insects
The mosquito dies and provides a small meal to a starving bird.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That bird’s song awakes me in New York<\/mark> at 5 A.M.
I shiver with a sudden sense of dread because the mosquito
Which it ate was poisoned by the blood of the girl which it bit
Because she was imbibed with lies and designer drugs and so the bird is
sick and it <\/mark>sings off key
As it jars me from sleep, and the room is folding over
Darker as I rise and I know a change is coming & bad & soon writing this poem<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Finally, one year later, in October 1998, Carroll published Void of Course<\/em>, which contains the poem “Sick Bird.” Still only 25 words remain from “phase two” (shown in blue). The green stanza from “phase three” (“A butterfly . . .”) and several other green phrases from phase three have been omitted. Additionally, there are two new stanzas and other smaller changes, which I’ve displayed in purple. Aside from these changes, most of “phase three” remains intact. One of the editorial changes Carroll made was to the line, “the bird is sick and it sings off key”–he omitted “is sick and<\/em>,” which is interesting because the published title is “Sick Bird.” I’ve marked omitted words\/phrases with highlighted purple asterisks “*<\/mark><\/strong>“.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

“Sick Bird”
Void of Course<\/em> (1998)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The positions we use when making love
Determine the next day’s weather<\/mark><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tomorrow it will rain
<\/mark>Then heat lightning by evening<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every time the telephone rings
A green sea turtle dies<\/mark>
And a phlegmatic guilt chants across your day<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The side of your head
Where you part your hair
Dictates the direction
The trees lean
Left or right
In the yard out back<\/mark><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A poor Mexican teenager in the Texas panhandle
Is suffering from a venereal disease
And as he urinates in his bathroom the pain
Is too much to bear, so he smashes his closed fist into the plaster
Leaving a hold there and he discovers a shelf within the wall
Filled with stacks of fifty-dollar bills left behind by a drug dealer perhaps
Who departed in haste and so he is rich for a lifetime
Because of pain and urine<\/mark><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A blond woman with a silver tongue stud and gold rings
Above her left eye lights a cigarette with a candle
In the VIP lounge of a club in Minneapolis
And the candle drips wax to the red carpet, somehow causing
A lone fisherman on an upstate lake<\/mark>
To slip on some odd substance, falling overboard and drowned
Eventually eaten by his own propeller
While a child from a lake tribe
Kneeling in his canoe
Watches in distance and mist
Unable to do a thing for him
He mutters, “That poor man,”
And paddles through the reeds
Skimming the surface with a plank
Continuing to harvest wild rice from the surface of Glacier Lake<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A popular character actress removes her Emerald brooch
After a banquet to raise money
For the twin benefit of Los Angeles runaways
And the Dalai Lama’s return to Tibet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By her simple actions, undoing the clasp of the brooch<\/mark>
The Dailai Lama stubs his left foot on a cabinet in his room
At the San Francisco Zen Center’s guest house, 800 miles up the coastline
Causing alarm among the Roshi and initiates, and a marlin-blue swelling
On the big toe of the gentle Lama, who meditates the pain to Maya<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While in a cluttered shop in the thin streets of Milan, italy,
Its floor filled with rosewood shavings
The air cramped with Oak dust,
The man who built the cabinet
On which the Dalai Lama’s foot was stubbed
Slumps over his workbench with a cerebral hemorrhage.
He is dead.
It had been growing a long while in his mind.
It was simply a matter of time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And a young Norwegian film student thoughtlessly<\/mark>
Decides to title his short film
It Was Simply a Matter of Time.
It has nothing to do
With time, however, nor the dead
Italian cabinet maker.*<\/mark><\/strong><\/mark><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A mosquito sucks the blood of a post-Soviet Baltic girl
And she falls in love with a balding Armenian
Who assures her that only girls with strong sexual drives are chosen by these insects
The mosquito dies and provides a small meal to a starving bird.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That bird’s song awakes me *<\/mark><\/strong><\/mark> <\/strong>at 5 A.M.
I shiver with a sudden sense of dread because the mosquito
Which it ate was poisoned by the blood of the girl which it bit
Because she was imbibed with lies and designer drugs and so the bird *<\/mark><\/strong><\/mark><\/strong> <\/strong>sings off key
As it jars me from sleep, and the room is folding over
Darker as I rise and I know a change is coming & bad & soon writing this poem<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

I can only wonder what this poem would have looked like if his publisher hadn’t given him a deadline!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Cassie CarterCatholicBoy.com 28 April 2004 I need to figure out a way to make this page accessible. Any ideas? In my scholarly work on Jim Carroll I have always taken particular interest in the ways in which Carroll’s works differ from one printing to another. He is a very careful and meticulous writer who … Continue reading Biography of a Poem: “Sick Bird\u201d by Jim Carroll<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":3990,"menu_order":5,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"folder":[35],"class_list":["post-4030","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P9VlUH-130","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":10503,"url":"https:\/\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/works\/articles-poems-by-jim-carroll\/boston-trio-by-jim-carroll-the-sunday-post-22-may-1988\/","url_meta":{"origin":4030,"position":0},"title":"Boston Trio. By Jim Carroll. The Sunday Post, 22 May 1988","author":"Cassie Carter","date":"June 19, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"Shared by Dominik Frankowski TBD if this is \"our\" Jim Carroll or another . . . Dominik Frankowski wrote me to say: \"I have a poem that was written in and around 1988-1990 by Jim Carroll titled \u201cBoston Trio\u201d about my dad, brother and I; my family and I were\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/image.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/image.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/image.png?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":8774,"url":"https:\/\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/questions-and-answers\/about-the-jim-carroll-website\/why-a-jim-carroll-website\/","url_meta":{"origin":4030,"position":1},"title":"Why a Jim Carroll Website?","author":"Cassie Carter","date":"March 7, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"By\u00a0Cassie Carter I have been developing this Jim Carroll site since 1995, and it has occurred to me that some might wonder\u00a0why\u00a0I'm doing it. Here's a brief rationale. Jim Carroll is a significant American artist. He's not prolific, but his talent with words is phenomenal, his ability to capture the\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10331,"url":"https:\/\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/research\/performance-reviews\/jim-carroll-to-make-michigan-appearances-by-mackenzie-a-wilson-the-state-news-michigan-state-university1998\/","url_meta":{"origin":4030,"position":2},"title":"Jim Carroll to Make Michigan Appearances – by Mackenzie A. Wilson – The State News – Michigan State University(1998)","author":"Cassie Carter","date":"June 10, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"Jim Carroll to make Michigan appearancesBy Mackenzie A. WilsonThe State News, Michigan State University20 February 1998 Courtesy of Jim Carroll \ufeff Jim Carroll is widely known for his famous book turned mainstream movie, \u201cThe Basketball Diaries,\u201d and will be making two stops in Michigan this weekend. Like many who associated\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/msu1-150x150.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4058,"url":"https:\/\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/works\/jim-carroll-music-and-spoken-word\/music-jim-carroll-jim-carroll-band\/dry-dreams\/","url_meta":{"origin":4030,"position":3},"title":"Dry Dreams","author":"catholicboy.com","date":"January 10, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"Cover Art - Dry Dreams (1982) - By The Jim Carroll Band Dry DreamsBy The Jim Carroll BandAtlantic, 1982 Get this on Amazon.comSee also: Lyrics and Audio Library SONGS Work, Not Play Dry Dreams Them Jealous Twin Lorraine Jody Barricades Evangeline Rooms Still Life Liner Notes Jim Carroll: VocalsWayne Woods:\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"Cover Art - Dry Dreams (1982) - By The Jim Carroll Band","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/ddreams.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4477,"url":"https:\/\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/works\/jim-carroll-music-and-spoken-word\/","url_meta":{"origin":4030,"position":4},"title":"Music & Spoken Word","author":"Cassie Carter","date":"January 10, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"This page provides an overview of recorded music and spoken work works, from rock & roll to poetry, on his own and with others, and even covers and tributes to Carroll. These works are organized by category. Music: Jim Carroll\/Jim Carroll Band Spoken-Word\/Lecture: Jim Carroll Spoken-Word: Collaborations Music: Collaborations Music:\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4036,"url":"https:\/\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/photos-video-audio\/press-photos\/","url_meta":{"origin":4030,"position":5},"title":"Press Photos","author":"Cassie Carter","date":"January 10, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"The photos on this page may be reprinted provided the photographers are credited. Photographer credit:Jim Carroll (1998) \u00a9Ray Lego\/Cut the Fat Jim Carroll (1998) \u00a9Ray Lego\/Cut the FatDownload Photographer credit:Jim Carroll (1998) \u00a9Ray Lego\/Cut the Fat Jim Carroll (1998) \u00a9Ray Lego\/Cut the FatDownload Photographer credit:Jim Carroll (1998) \u00a9Ray Lego\/Cut the\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"Jim Carroll (1998) \u00a9Ray Lego\/Cut the Fat","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/JC1998_bw_001.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/JC1998_bw_001.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/JC1998_bw_001.png?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4030","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4030"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4030\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9742,"href":"https:\/\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4030\/revisions\/9742"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"folder","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.catholicboy.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/folder?post=4030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}