Patti Smith Talks New Book

Patti Smith has opened up about her award winning new book 'Just Kids' based on a past relationship.

Patti Smith is one of rock's most eloquent figures. Albums such as 'Horses' introduced a new language for rock music, mixing post Beat Generation literature with a knowledge of what would become punk.

A vastly influential songwriter, Patti Smith recently completed her new book 'Just Kids'. Focussing on her relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, the non-fiction book contains a glittering list of guest figures.

Given across the board praise, 'Just Kids' was a labour of love for Patti Smith. Speaking to Spinner, the writer explained that she went through her archives to sift through diaries and letters before beginning the book.

"I went over a lot of materials," she said. "Robert's letters to me, my daily diaries of when I was 20; and when I lived at the Chelsea (Hotel), I wrote down what happened, every day. I have little notations like 'Cut Robert's hair,' 'Met Janis Joplin,' 'Got a new book store job,' 'Met Salvador Dali.' So I have the exact dates of when these things happened, so it helped in providing a proper chronology."

Continuing, Patti Smith revealed that she always keeps a diary - a habit inspired by her grandmother. "I kept diaries as sort of a family history," she explained. "My grandmother kept diaries and I wanted to be a writer, but I couldn't always bring myself to write. So I disciplined myself about what happened in the day; I still do it. I write something almost every day, even if it's just a list of things to think about."

Containing some very personal revelations, 'Just Kids' was written at the suggestion of Robert Mapplethorpe who spoke with the singer before he died. "I promised Robert the day before he died that I would write it," she said.

"And since I was the only one who knew him this intimately when he was young, and because we went through so much together as lovers and friends and artists, he could count on me to be truthful."

Patti Smith's new book 'Just Kids' is out now.

Source: Clash Magazine

FONTE: http://www.electrogarden.com/

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Patti Smith: Just Kids (Feltrinelli)

Chiara Leandri

Se riesci a trovare qualcosa capace di infonderti passione, vera passione, costante, semplice e testarda, seguila. Sono poche le cose capaci di continua fascinazione. Poca roba che non sia la moda del momento, futile, fragile, passeggera. Patti Smith è uno di quegli esempi, statuari e incrollabili. E’ vita vissuta per l’arte. Ancora una volta: cosa ci sarà da dire, chiederete voi. Dopo un’immensa discografia. Libri di poesie, saggi, film. Perché ancora parlarne, perché non si può soprassedere?

Sarà la sua ruvida semplicità. Patti riduce tutto al minimo per poi scoprire la bellezza del singolo oggetto, per finire e perdersi sinesteticamente in Rimbaud. Perfino in un pulcioso appartamento sulla Eight Avenue.

Questa infatti è la storia stupenda di un’amicizia, di un’epoca, di una ricerca, e di una formazione. Di una musica sottile che cerca la sua affermazione. E’ la storia di Patricia Lee Smith e di Robert Mapplethorpe, artisti squattrinati nella città che non dorme mai. E’ un frammento di Storia del Rock, del Pop, dell’Arte e della Letteratura che si dipana leggero. E’ il viaggio di due homeless, feccia della società che cerca l’immortalità, e che per questo non si risparmia. E’ poi la storia del Chelsea Hotel - scialuppa di salvataggio per artisti, luogo mitologico, viavai di facce e sorprese. Scorrono le foto, sguardi di un passato imperscrutabile, scatti in bianco e nero di quelli che pensi “qui c’è qualcosa che le parole non dicono e mai diranno del tutto”. Un’immaginaria continuazione di quella mostra che Patti e Robert erano riusciti ad allestire: da una parte i disegni di lei, dall’altra le foto di lui. Tutto parla, tutto seduce. L’epilogo, per chi conosce i personaggi, non può che essere un pezzo di infinita dolcezza e crudeltà.

Cosa rimane? Rimane l’amore. L’arte. E quel pezzo di storia che non possiamo permetterci di dimenticare. Credo che sia impossibile finire di parlare di Patti Smith. Anche solo per tutto ciò che il suo personaggio, la Sacerdotessa, ha ancora da dire. Non tace, non si nasconde. Ed è per questo che mi tengo stretta a quelle poche cose capaci di darmi passione.

FONTE: Vitaminic, di Chiara Leandri

http://www.vitaminic.it/
http://www.vitaminic.it/2010/11/patti-smith-just-kids-feltrinelli/

The Poetry of Patti Smith

John Lundberg

Writer and poetry teacher

Posted: November 21, 2010 11:53 AM Patti Smith won the National Book Award for Nonfiction this past week for her memoir "Just Kids," which recounts her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe in the '60s and '70s. But "Just Kids" is far from her first flirtation with the written word.

Smith has actually published numerous books of poetry. And unlike other successful rock stars who have stumbled awkwardly into verse (Jewel and Billy Corgan come to mind), Smith's work reflects that she was a poet first, and that her love affair with the art runs deep.

Smith grew up with poetry; her mother gave her a copy of William Blake's "Songs of Innocence and of Experience" when she was just eight. She fell hard for the visionary Romantic and never seems to have recovered. The title of her most recent book of poetry, "Auguries of Innocence," is a quote from Blake.

Blake is known to have been somewhat eccentric (it's said that he and his wife liked to spend time nude in their garden reenacting the Garden of Eden), and Smith's views on poetry and the creative process, are, it's safe to say, eccentric as well. She once wrote:

I don't consider writing a quiet, closet act.

I consider it a real physical act.

When I'm home writing on the typewriter, I go crazy.

I move like a monkey.

I've wet myself, I've come in my pants writing.

Anyone doubting the veracity of that statement needs only to read Smith's poetry on Arthur Rimbaud, the ecstatic French Symbolist who became the subject of her poetic fantasies. In an early prose poem she wrote of him:

he enters. leans against the four-poster. his ruddy cheeks. contemptuous air big hands. I find him sexy as hell ... he licks my hand ... we embrace. I devour his scalp.

And she wrote elsewhere:

Oh arthur arthur, we are in Abyssinia Aden making

love smoking cigarettes. we kiss. but its much more.

...exploding. seam of berber tent splitting. openings,

open as a cave, open wider. total surrender.

Smith has also long adored what she calls the "unfailing vision" of the French poet/critic Charles Baudelaire. She sometimes dresses like him and is known to cry out his name during concerts.

But as much as she idolized the Symbolists, her writing is often stylistically closer to the Beats in its stream-of-consciousness style and deliberately shocking content. This snippet from her poem "Rape," for example, reads more like Kerouac or Ginsberg (whom she actually knew well) than anyone else:

let's whalebone let's go

let's deodorize the night.

And in performance, Smith seems born to read Beat poetry. Watch her reading from Ginsberg's "Footnote to Howl" here.

When Smith chooses to constrain her ecstatic tendencies, she can still write a very good poem. "Tara," a quiet, well-paced and mysterious poem that you can read here, first appeared in the May 2007 issue of The New Yorker.

Smith chose to leave the tragedy at the heart of "Tara" unspoken. She only later explained "The Best American Poetry" that the poem deals with the tragic shooting of 32 students and faculty in April 2007 at Virginia Tech. Tara is in fact Smith's sister, and the poem takes place right after she learns that her daughter, who was attending classes at Virginia Tech, is safe.

All in all, Smith's poetry is more jewel than Jewel, and it is some of the only rock star poetry that I consistently enjoy reading. Here's hoping that the success of her memoir brings more attention to her poems.

FONTE: Huffington Post (blog)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-lundberg/the-poetry-of-patti-smith_b_786090.html
FOTO: gibson.com