Too Fast to Live, Too Young to Work
- Too Fast to Live, Too Young to Work
"Too Fast to Live, Too Young to Work" is a poem by Mark Lamarr, published under his birth name as Mark Jones. Written in 1985, when he was eighteen and had left school, he submitted it to Faber and Faber, where it subsequently appeared in a volume of "Hard Lines".
The poem proved to be the launching point of Mark Lamarr's career. He later described it as "a piss-take of all that 'God, isn't life so dreary. . .', that disenchanted youth and urban wasteland thing of the early Eighties."
The poem is sometimes mistakenly referred to as "I'm the James Dean of the Dole Queue," which is actually the first line. The volume of "Hard Lines" in which it appeared is long out of print, but the poem itself read:
"I'm the James Dean of the dole queue"
"You've got to admire my cheek -"
"Trying to work out how to live fast and die young"
"On seventeen-fifty a week."
"A legend in my own cubicle"
"All alone, never one of the mob"
"I'm the James Dean of the dole queue"
"A rebel without a job."
External links
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqaqGCyl2Kw Video of Mark reading the poem in 1985]
References
Bedell, Geraldine (Jan. 28, 1996) [http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_19960128/ai_n9641473| On the Mark] Retrieved April 22, 2006.
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