In this memoir Patti Smith describes herself as ‘a singular traveler in search of the garden of childhood’s hour’. She begins with her earliest memories – toppling a toy from her highchair, taking her first steps before the age of one. For most of us the wonders of childhood recede but for an artist like Patti Smith they persist and inform her creativity. The many illnesses that punctuated her childhood seem to have allowed time for imaginative contemplation. Perhaps the simplicity of growing up in straitened circumstances made encounters with her ‘talismans of creativity’ – Rimbaud, Dylan, Picasso – more vivid.
Certainly, an unplanned pregnancy in her final year at teacher’s college sees her life take a radical turn. Leaving family, education and child behind, Patti heads for New York where friendships with Robert Mapplethorpe, Sam Shepard and Bob Dylan place her at the epicentre of artistic life in the 1970s. Writing poetry progresses to spoken word, cabaret and her first album, Horses – the start of a successful international recording and performing career.
The second radical twist in her life comes at the end of the decade when she turns her back on performing and goes to live with the man she recognises as her soulmate – Fred ‘Sonic’ Smith. They marry and have two children.
In her long life deaths of family and friends often block her ability to write. It is the imaginative gifts discovered in ‘childhood’s hour’ that carry her through such dark times and inform her ongoing creativity. This is an illuminating and, at times, deeply poetic account of an artist’s life – highly recommended.
Reviewed by Peter Gray
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Patti Smith is a writer, performer and visual artist. She gained recognition in the 1970s for her revolutionary merging of poetry and rock. She has recorded thirteen albums, launched by the seminal Horses in 1975. Smith had her first exhibit of drawings at the Gotham Book Mart in 1973 and has been represented by the Robert Miller Gallery since 1978. Her many books include Witt, Babel, Woolgathering, The Coral Sea, M Train, Year of the Monkey, and Just Kids, which won the National Book Award in 2010. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007. Smith lives in New York City.
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