Just Kids
Patti Smith, Ecco, Jan. 2010
978-006-6211312, $27.00

Deeply personal and insightfully written, Patti Smith’s New York story delivers the emotional narrative that Bob Dylan’s Chronicles left readers wanting. Tracing the relationship between Smith and photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, Just Kids explores the thriving artistic community of New York in the 60’s and 70’s and paints a portrait of two eccentrics, two searchers, two creators, as they navigate their way through art, sickness and each other.

It is invigorating to read about the city forty years ago, where artistically, anything seemed possible and collaboration was abundant. Accounts of Smith and Mapplethorpe’s interactions with artists like Salvador Dali, William Burroughs, Andy Warhol, Tennessee Williams, Janis Joplin, and Jimi Hendrix are scattered throughout Just Kids. Smith recounts her and Mapplethorpe’s years at the famous Hotel Chelsea where they immersed themselves in poetry, theatre, music, and photography with some of the country’s most exciting minds: Smith writes a play with Sam Shepard, sings a song for Janis Joplin, discusses poetry with Alan Ginsberg.

Most compelling, however, is Smith’s depiction of her dearest friend Robert Mapplethorpe. With a tender candor she walks us through the enigmatic artist’s formative years as he grapples with demons, works ferociously, and strives for recognition. One learns how Mapplethorpe’s own conflicted sexuality and religious upbringing influenced his work and ultimately led him to choose photography as his medium.

Just Kids demonstrates why Smith is a great American storyteller, and the strength of her prose never lets us forget that she began as a poet. This is a book I urge any artist to read, if not to help us recapture the artistic energy of days past, then at least to celebrate it.

Purchase Just Kids here.

It is the steam of ideas, addiction,
and 9 million tenant farmers
confusing their nesses:

Forget, Forgive

Cut fingernails on microchips and monitors,
battle exhaustion in a city the
zeitgeist claims never sleeps.

It is where the black haired, black eyed women,
angular and dripping mystique,
haunt the cement caves below
ulcered Dominican children who
vomit hope behind drapes of Spanish moss.

All promises varnished with importance,
in a place where not even a 70 story drop
can disrupt frenetic normalcy.

The subtleties are choked by scale
and everyone is a magician
who can turn nothing into nothing.

Burlesque troubadours dance to
spaghetti western soundtracks
and sell books on the streets.

The alleys are chapels,
and paper bag priests lead syringe
sermons and shudder with praise.

Those blessed with closets in the windowed statues
scent them of home:
family photos and favorite blankets.
But still the lease is a sentence.

And mom,
I’m not cracking windshields,
but the problems don’t fade with place,
and I’ve taken this 80 minute plane ride
only to find I’m more empty under the light.

Another of my friends died Wednesday, but the paper just printed the story today. I suppose keeping him alive for the 50,000 person circulation for three more days can’t hurt those who were aware of him.

Heart attack on his bike in front of the elementary school he attended. 24 years old. The second virile person I’ve known who has died over the past three weeks.

Fucking mindblowing.

As we get older we are forced to encounter death more frequently, the question of time demanding our attention. When they start to go away. We smoke more, drink more; try to squeeze our sponge in tight fists until all the art and beauty and meaning is drained. An attempt to find comfort before the moments when we must confront our own cessation, moments that are now, with flowers wilting in my own garden, occurring in my life with a much greater frequency.