The Genius of Patti Smith

With A Book of Days, the iconic artist cements her status as literary rock star.

- By Holly George Warren

You walk like a poet.” In 1969, at New York’s landmark Chelsea Hotel, this remark directed at a notebook-toting Patti Smith changed the course of her life; Bob Neuwirth, a songwriter and aide-de-camp to Janis Joplin, urged the 22-year-old to perform the words she’d been writing for years. In 1971, she would debut her half-spoken, half-sung hallucinatory verse at St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery, kicking off her career as a seminal recording artist, resulting in such game-changing albums as Horses 1975), Easter 1978), and Wave 1979). Performing, she says, became her vehicle to improvise poetry.”

All along, literary mentors—Sam Shepard, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Gregory Corso—encouraged her to continue writing, resulting in multiple books of poetry and prose. In 1989, her soulmate, photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, would plead on his deathbed that she write our story”— which became the 2010 National Book Award winner, Just Kids.