Jump to content

Patti Smith • Rock Stars Who Write Poetry


DudeAsInCool

Recommended Posts

Meghan O'Rourke at Slate takes a look at Patti Smith's poetry in her article, "Meet Sylvia Plath, Rock stars who write poems":

"Smith was a poet before she became a musician. As a sickly girl in southern New Jersey, her romantic heroes were all poets: She pored over Robert Louis Stevenson, William Blake, and, later, Rimbaud. "I was writing poetry when I was a teenager—really bad jazz poetry, long poems on the death of Charlie Parker, things like that." When she moved to New York with Robert Mapplethorpe, then her lover, her interest was fed by the rebellious literary energy of the Beats. "When we moved to the Chelsea Hotel in 1969, I met a lot of poets and writers and developed my poetry more. In Brooklyn, I had worked on drawing, but in the Chelsea Hotel I saw Allen Ginsberg or William Burroughs every day. Gregory [Corso] was there, Jim Carroll—so poetry was a very strong force then," she said. One day, she asked the guitarist Lenny Kaye to plug in and add some musical accompaniment during a reading she gave in St. Mark's Church. Her performative gifts were self-evident, and she became a rock star almost instantly. In the oral history Please Kill Me, an early publisher of her poetry, Victor Bockris, recalls thinking, "She's an asshole, but she's really good."

Read more @ Slate

post-9-1192656931.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 year later...
  • 9 months later...

Please sign in to comment

You will be able to leave a comment after signing in



Sign In Now
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
  • Our picks

    • Wait, Burning Man is going online-only? What does that even look like?
      You could have been forgiven for missing the announcement that actual physical Burning Man has been canceled for this year, if not next. Firstly, the nonprofit Burning Man organization, known affectionately to insiders as the Borg, posted it after 5 p.m. PT Friday. That, even in the COVID-19 era, is the traditional time to push out news when you don't want much media attention. 
      But secondly, you may have missed its cancellation because the Borg is being careful not to use the C-word. The announcement was neutrally titled "The Burning Man Multiverse in 2020." Even as it offers refunds to early ticket buyers, considers layoffs and other belt-tightening measures, and can't even commit to a physical event in 2021, the Borg is making lemonade by focusing on an online-only version of Black Rock City this coming August.    Read more...
      More about Burning Man, Tech, Web Culture, and Live EventsView the full article
      • 0 replies
    • Post in What Are You Listening To?
      Post in What Are You Listening To?
    • Post in What Are You Listening To?
      Post in What Are You Listening To?
    • Post in What Are You Listening To?
      Post in What Are You Listening To?
    • Post in What Are You Listening To?
      Post in What Are You Listening To?
×
×
  • Create New...