fantasy gave me fire
A Portfolio of Poems by patti smith.
Patti’s 25, she looks like Keith Richard, and she writes killer rock’n’roll songs. She is also an excellent poet and a damn good playwright and as forthright a woman as any you’ll meet. “I’m one of the best poets in rock and roll,” she says ingenuously; there have been few who’ve heard her works that would disagree.
Mostly, she came to what prominence she has via a poetry reading at St. Marks-In-The-Bowery, where she was second billed to Gerard Malanga. “It was Gerard Malanga’s night, and like at the Fillmore, I was supposed to be the dumb little group supporting the big star.”
She showed up with rock critic/burgeoning rock star Lenny Kaye and his dynamic electric guitar, read a fifteen minute program of her own songs and a couple of others, led off by a bizarre version of “Mack the Knife.” The applause at the end of Brigid Polk’s tape of the event is near-deafening.