Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Patti Smith: An Interview, A Reading, and Some Heroine




Patti Smith Reading Virginia Woolf


Here's is a long interview with Patti Smith on one of her recent poetry books, Auguries of Innocence. She covers a wide range of topics, discussing the inspiration for many of the poems and her influences, interspersed with writings and her remembrances over the years. Along the way she touches on Diane Arbus, Virginia Woolf, Nat King Cole, Modigliani, Jim Morrison, William Blake, Janis Joplin, H. P. Lovecraft, R. L. Stevenson, Jimi Hendrix and many more.

For an objective look, here's Slate's take on Auguries, in which Patti name checks, among others, James Wright, a little more surprising then Blake, Rimbaud, Ginsberg and Whitman, whom she regularly invokes.

And here is exactly where the thin line between poetry and music meet ...





Dancing Barefoot - Patti Smith



best,
Don

4 comments:

Charles Gramlich said...

wow, that song is really cool. I like it a lot. Gonna have to play it over again. She's got a great voice.

Ed Baker said...

isn't Patti Smith Joan Baez' sister?

or is that "something" Farina?

or some (very) close connection between P. Smith and Joan Baez?

ohhh Mimi Farina, I think, is Joan Baez's sister and, I could have the spelling wrong..

and, I can't believe Patti Smith is about my age! (shit.)

thanks for the post ,, fub "stuff"

Issa's Untidy Hut said...

Charles:

Glad you liked the song. Patti is the formidable woman poet of rock and rock, as intense and important as Morrison, in my estimation.

Horses is the best album and Land is a great cross section of all her work.

Ed:

Mimi Farina it is, Joan's sister and Richard's wife, Richard being her partner in the Greenwich Village folk scene of the 60's and author of Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me.

Don

Ed Baker said...

yeah... and I just
'googled' Mimi and found out that she died in 2001!

saw them w Pete Seeger and Bob Zimmerman and Joan Baez at a Hooten-an-ny many moons ago!

GAWD! next thing y'all will tell me is that [...] is dead.

New Year's morning
searching
the obituaries
to see
if I am here