Customer Reviews

Praying Mantis [Explicit]

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First off, let's state for the record that this is a "spoken word" only CD, so those looking for music must look elsewhere.
Jim Carroll is one of my favorite poets, and so I concidered myself lucky to find this CD at my favorite used CD shop. Unlike Carrols other CD's, which are more spoken word and attempts at singing set to music backdrops. Here, Carroll is recorded live in various venues and recites everything from monologue to prose to poetry to amusing anecdotes; now, he's not the best monologuer in the world, but he has a unique cadence and imbues emotion into the sundries he presents.
"Tiny Tortures" is a monologue about an impromptu "performance act," and attacks pretentious artists and critics. Another longer monologue is "The Loss of American Innocence," in which a pre-teens first masturbation is paralleled to the death of John F. Kennedy (believe it or not). "Just Visiting" explores the last thoughts of a bank robber in vivid prose. As with most of the work on the CD, these piece explore sexuality, and how sexuality is an under-current in our everyday lives. Also, the CD is VERY sexually explicit, so be warned.
The stand-outs are still his poems, which reflect the influence of symbolists like Rimbaud. "For Elizabeth" is about a young girl who overdosed on heroine:
This place where I have put you now,
It is a cursed season, an awkward
line, a flawed circle. A snake of fire
devouring what, tomorrow, it will itself become.

"Praying Mantis" is a great compliment to "Fear of Dreaming," Carroll's selected poems. It's not the best spoken word CD ever made, but you gotta love a man who revises Nietzsche: "What does not kill me only serves to make me sleep until 3:30 the next afternoon."

no, there's no music on this cd. but the guy's a poet, not a singer! i prefer this to most of the band stuff. then again, i'm a big fan. have been for nearly 20 years. "just visiting" and "loss of am. innocence" are my faves. for completists or carroll uber-fans? noooo! that distinction goes to "pools of mercury".that's how i feel, anyway.

I for one really like this cd , I listen to it all the time . I never got to go to a reading of his and I really wish I could've but maybe it's because it's a live cd I feel like I'm at one everytime I listen to this cd . No I'm not crazy , that's just the best I can describe the feeling this cd gives me . I also really liked the poetry that was read on the cd and like the others said there isn't any music on this cd but that's not the kind of cd this is anyway . I think a lot of the things he reads on this cd are really beautiful in their own way and not to mention there is some comedy in it when he reads things like the monologue The Loss of American Innocence . As you can tell over all I really enjoy this cd . RIP Jim you will be messed !

This is a CD of a Jim Carroll nightclub performance where he spews out a little poetry and tells stories in his poetic style. They are mildly interesting stories, but most are not that deep.

On this CD, Carroll makes fun of performance art (even though that is what he is doing), talks a lot of about sexual issues (...) and explores the mind of a psychopathic bank robber (the only really deep bit).

Most of the time Carroll talks with emotion, but there are times he sounds like he is just reading his material. There are even times he stumbles over words, like he misread them.

There is probably nothing on this CD I would want to hear more than once. Carroll is a poet and sometimes rock musician. He had a wild, on the edge childhood. It is featured in the movie the Basketball Diaries.