Reviews
Such a beautiful life dedicated to art in all its ways. Infinite cool cat name dropping and naïveté. The whole thing somewhere between poetry and autobiography.
Beautiful in every way.
Augh! energetic and filled with care, impressive pacing that alternately pulled me through and demanded that I slow down. this book is making me make more art
I first came across Patti Smith through her song Summer Cannibals. Despite knowing little about her beforehand, I found this book surprisingly easy to follow and very enjoyable. While some of the names mentioned (likely notable figures) were unfamiliar to me, it didn’t detract from my enjoyment, I loved every moment of it.
rereading this is such a whirl!!!! like the intense nostalgia i am feeling and also joy at rediscovering the whimsy that is patti smith’s literary world- it’s made me excited to reread all her other stuff because im remembering that what i love more than anything about her writing is the way talks about cafes and having a coffee and doughnut at the beach and i feel like im 16 again in awe at her and her words. i could ramble loads about this but ill save that for my journal
update: i defo feel different rereading this now with fresh eyes. i loved the first quarter but found most of the middle section a little tiresome. i’ll always love how patti smith writes - she weaves words in incredibly ways- but it felt more arrogant and restrictive than i remembered, i feel like she holds back a lot and i wished there was more emotion.
An earnest love story.
“No one could speak for these two young people nor tell with any truth of their days and nights together.” incredibly raw and personal, i couldn’t get enough of patti smith’s writing. it may take some time for me to move on from this.
moved me to tears. such a poignant writer.
This book is about love. Love between Patti and Robert. It is also about art, and the passion of making art. It's about sacrifice. This book has the capacity of transporting you to the 70's. It has the capacity of making you imagine about being Patti Smith in that time. Of meeting Robert Mapplethorpe and with him living that life. Living at the Chelsea Hotel. Meeting Janis Jopling, Sandy Pearlman, Jimi Hendrix and so more. It was my first Patti Smith book but it won't be my last.
so tender and full of love and understanding! the writing was so vivid, i almost felt like i was there too in the new york of patti and robert and all the other artists they’ve met. im not much of a memoires reader, but this felt so much like a long conversation with a friend
life changing
Je sais pas trop ce qui m’a pris tant de temps à finir le tout dernier quart du livre. Il y a un moment où tu n’as pas d’autre choix que d’être emporté dans son journal à elle, page après page, jour après jour, et il y a cette relation de confidence qui se crée. Elle m’a beaucoup inspirée, on veut tous être Patti Smith d’une manière ou d’une autre. Mais un jour il est temps de se détacher du quotidien de Patti et d’emporter avec soi toutes les idées qui ont germées en l’accompagnant. Alors voilà, quelque part entre le 19 septembre et aujourd’hui il a été temps pour moi de me concentrer sur ma vie et de m’affairer à la traverser moi.
reading this transported me to their time and it felt like i was with them. however, i did not really connect to it the way i expected it to, given all the love this receives. its beautifully crafted tho
"I'm certain, as we filed down the great staircase, that I appeared the same as ever, a moping twelve-year-old, all arms and legs. But secretly I knew I had been transformed, moved by the revelation that human beings create art, that to be an artist was to see what others could not."
beautifully written (crying)
this book is the embodiment of love. i feel very heavy, but in the most flightless way.. absolutely incredible. ✦
“No one could speak for these two young people nor tell with any truth of their days and nights together.”
incredibly raw and personal, i couldn’t get enough of patti smith’s writing. it may take some time for me to move on from this.
everything makes me cry nowadays
4.25 stars twas a beautiful read
“Finally, by the sea, where God is everywhere, I gradually calmed. I stood looking at the sky. The clouds were the colours of a Raphael. A wounded rose. I had the sensation he had painted it himself. You will see him. You will know him. You will know his hand.” this book had me slowly crying for days and days. beautiful. a real life story full of movement and inspiration. giving this to my dad next.
i will remember her forever
i LOVED this so much ❤️❤️🩹💔
⭐️⭐️⭐️¾ i think I loved a lot of things about this book; recently I've been hyperfixated on finding inspiration in what I read and watch and I really felt that this came along at the right time. the overall atmosphere was so fascinating and I was just completely enamoured by these artists' lives and projects and creative ventures. I didn't even mind the endless name dropping that much because it helped me to understand Patti and Robert's cultural relevance at the time, knowing very little about them prior to reading this. the style of writing lost me at times because it could just feel like an interminable, rambling monologue (which I don't think was helped by the really long sections - although I don't know that I would have preferred shorter chapters...) but the final section really redeemed the whole book for me, reminding me of the beautiful relationship at the centre of it all. ultimately, the overpouring of love which Smith displays in her characterisation of Robert throughout was what endeared me and left me actually quite emotional. so my last image was as the first. a sleeping youth cloaked in light, who opened his eyes with a smile of recognition for someone who had never been a stranger.
3.7 would be more appropriate. Good, sincere, and vulnerable writing. I think it would resonate with ppl in creative professions more. I really did like the portrayal of the pursuit of creative passion tho. The do or die mindset and the refusal to live in a way that wasn’t extreme to your interests. Very rock star but it also written specifically for patti. Also yeah it’s obviously great that she made it but the way creative professions truly ONLY predicate on luck and social networking is scary to me. This book was very true to that, the weight of pursuing risk without connection or safety networks. It’s tough is such an understatement 😭 but that’s the best way I can put it haha. Also the joy of finding your soulmate and the idea that this doesn’t have to be romantic. I loved that.
Highlights
Paris had already changed in a year, as had I. It seemed as if the whole of the world was slowly being stripped of innocence. Or maybe I was seeing a little too clearly.
I tried to speak of my feelings in a drawing or poem but I couldn’t. It seemed whenever I wanted to express injustice I never had the right lines.
Occasionally I would read their cards, deriving meanings from a mix of Papus and my own intuition.
And when we went home he was unnaturally quiet and looked at me as if he wanted to convey all he was feeling without words. There was something of us that he saw in the movie but I wasn’t certain what. I thought to myself that he contained a whole universe that I had yet to know.
Wordlessly we absorbed the thoughts of one another and just as dawn broke fell asleep in each other’s arms. When we awoke he greeted me with his crooked smile, and I knew he was my knight.
I was a skinny thing with a high metabolism and a strong appetite. Romanticism could not quench my need for food.
But nature with all her force would have the final word. The irony that I, who never wanted to be a girl nor grow up, would be faced with this trial did not escape me. I was humbled by nature.
I was in a Beat humor. The Bibles were piled in small stacks. The Holy Barbarians. The Angry Young Men. Rummaging around, I found some poems by Ray Bremser. He really got me going. Ray had that human saxophone thing. You could feel his improvisational ease the way language spilled out like linear notes. Inspired, I put on some Coltrane but nothing good happened. I was just jacking off. Truman Capote once accused Kerouac of typing, not writing. But Kerouac infused his being onto rolls of Teletype paper, banging on his machine. Me, I was typing. I leapt up frustrated.
At twenty years old, I boarded the bus. I wore my dungarees, black turtleneck, and the old gray raincoat I had bought in Camden. My small suitcase, yellow-and-red plaid, held some drawing pencils, a notebook, Illuminations, a few pieces of clothing, and pictures of my siblings. I was superstitious. Today was a Monday; I was born on Monday. It was a good day to arrive in New York City. No one expected me. Everything awaited me.
Nobody sees as we do, Patti.
We learned we wanted too much. We could only give from the perspective of who we were and what we had. Apart, we were able to see with even greater clarity that we didn’t want to be without each other.
Where does it all lead? What will become of us? These were our young questions, and young answers were revealed.
It leads to each other. We become ourselves.
In the war of magic and religion, is magic ultimately the victor? Perhaps priest and magician were once one, but the priest, learning humility in the face of God, discarded the spell for prayer.
I have lived for love, I have lived for Art. I closed my eyes and folded my hands. Providence determined how I would say goodbye.
On other days, we would visit art museums. There was only enough money for one ticket, so one of us would go in, look at the exhibits, and report back to the other.
On one such occasion, we went to the relatively new Whitney Museum on the Upper East Side. It was my turn to go in, and I reluctantly entered without him. I no longer remember the exhibit, but I do recall peering through one of the museum's unique trapezoidal windows, seeing Robert across the street, leaning against a parking meter, smoking a cigarette.
He waited for me, and as we headed toward the subway he said, "One day we'll go in together, and the work will be ours."
I was particularly moved by the drawing he had done on Memorial Day. I had never seen anything like it. What also struck me was the date: Joan of Arc's feast day. The same day I had promised to make something of myself before her statue.
I told him this, and he responded that the drawing was symbolic of his own commitment to art, made on the same day. He gave it to me without hesitation and I understood that in this small space of time we had mutually surrendered our loneliness and replaced it with trust.
For just a couple dollars we both got lucky. We headed home holding hands. For a moment I dropped back to watch him walk. His sailor's gait always touched me. I knew one day I would stop and he would keep on going, but until then nothing could tear us apart.
He wondered, as he rested his head on my shoulder if I would have been better off if I hadn't come back. But I did come back. In the end we were better off together.
Perhaps it was an awareness of time passing, the last summer of the decade. Sometimes I just wanted to raise my hands and stop. But stop what? Maybe just growing up.
WILD LEAVES
Wild leaves are falling
Falling to the ground
Every leaf a moment
A light upon the crown
That we'll all be wearing
In a time unbound
And wild leaves are falling
Falling to the ground
Every word that's spoken
Every word decreed
Every spell that's broken
Every golden deed
All the parts we're playing
Binding as the reed
And wild leaves are falling
Wild wild leaves
The spirits that are mentioned
The myths that have been shorn
Everything we've been through
And the colors worn
Every chasm entered
Every story wound
And wild leaves are falling
Falling to the ground
As the campfire's burning
As the fire ignites
All the moments turning
In the stormy bright
Well enough the churning
Well enough believe
The coming and the going
Wild wild leaves
MEMORIAL POEM
As there is strength
in blackness
a deep control
a calla flare
trumpets
grace corporeal
there is a steady hand
adjusting child lace
and bravery's face
in veil inviolate
there is a steady hand
adept in heavens skin
spending into black
where pure hearts
are kin.
But before I did, it occurred to me looking around at all of your things and your work and going through years of work in my mind, that of all your work, you are still your most beautiful. The most beautiful work of all.
Our lives were moving at such speed that we just kept going.
Who can know the heart of youth but youth itself?