Fear of Dreaming: The Selected Poems of Jim Carroll (First Edition)

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 The Book of Nods are not included in Fear of Dreaming, one of the “New York City Variations” originally left out of The Book of Nods can be found on page 191 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 In addition, the final section of the book, “New Work 1989-1993,” offers fifteen previously unpublished poems and prose works. Among these are the short story “Curtis’s Charm” (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 the National Endowment for the Arts.”

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

Excluded 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.)

Excluded 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)

See Also

• Second edition – this is more than a new cover: it contains several important changes.
• Collecting
• Curtis’s Charm