Poet & Punk Rocker Jim Carroll Dead

Poet and rocker Jim Carroll died Friday. He is best known for his book The Basketball Diaries, an autobiographical tale of his life as a star athlete at Trinity, an elite private high school in Manhattan. Carroll, the son of a bar owner, attended Trinity on a scholarship. The Basketball Diaries, which began life as a journal, was first published in 1978. A 1995 movie version starred Leonardo DiCaprio. Carroll also published several poetry collections, including The Book of Nods(1986),Fear of Dreaming(1993) and Poems 1994-1997(1998). The singer Patti Smith encouraged him to break into music, and he formed the Jim Carroll Band. His 1980 album, Catholic Boy, is described as a landmark punk record. One of its songs, People Who Died. is Carroll's best known musical work. Among his other albums were the less successful Dry Dreams (1982) and I Write Your Name(1984).