Most Popular Books by Patti Smith

WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD It was the summer Coltrane died, the summer of love and riots, and the summer when a chance encounter in Brooklyn led two young people on a path of art, devotion, and initiation. Patti Smith would evolve as a poet and performer, and Robert Mapplethorpe would direct his highly provocative style toward photography. Bound in innocence and enthusiasm, they traversed the city from Coney Island to Forty-Second Street, and eventually to the celebrated round table of Max’s Kansas City, where the Andy Warhol contingent held court. In 1969, the pair set up camp at the Hotel Chelsea and soon entered a community of the famous and infamous, the influential artists of the day and the colorful fringe. It was a time of heightened awareness, when the worlds of poetry, rock and roll, art, and sexual politics were colliding and exploding. In this milieu, two kids made a pact to take care of each other. Scrappy, romantic, committed to create, and fueled by their mutual dreams and drives, they would prod and provide for one another during the hungry years. Just Kids begins as a love story and ends as an elegy. It serves as a salute to New York City during the late sixties and seventies and to its rich and poor, its hustlers and hellions. A true fable, it is a portrait of two young artists’ ascent, a prelude to fame.

A collection of Smith''s early poems and prose, which is both meditative and explosive, and evokes the desire to break boundaries in the pre-punk era.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A radiant new memoir from artist and writer Patti Smith, author of the National Book Award winner Just Kids A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: TIME, NPR, THE NEW YORKER “God whispers through a crease in the wallpaper,” writes Patti Smith in this moving account of her life. A post–World War II childhood unfolds in a condemned housing complex where we enter the child’s world of the imagination. Smith, the captain of her loyal and beloved sibling army, vanquishes bullies, communes with the king of tortoises, and searches for sacred silver pennies. The most intimate of Smith’s memoirs, Bread of Angels takes us through her teenage years where the first glimmers of art and romance take hold. Arthur Rimbaud and Bob Dylan emerge as creative role models as she begins to write poetry then lyrics, ultimately merging both into the songs of iconic recordings such as Horses, Wave, and Easter. She leaves it all behind to marry her one true love, Fred Sonic Smith, with whom she creates a life of devotion and adventure on a canal in St. Clair Shores, Michigan. Here, she invents a room of her own, a low table, a Persian cup, inkwell and pen, entering at dawn to write. The couple spend nights in their landlocked Chris-Craft studying nautical maps and charting new adventures as they start a family. A series of profound losses mark her life. Grief and gratitude are braided through years of caring for her children, rebuilding her life and, finally, writing again—the one constant in a life driven by artistic freedom and the power of the imagination to transform the commonplace into the magical, and pain into hope. In the final pages, we meet Smith on the road again, the vagabond who travels to commune with herself, who lives to write and writes to live.

A new trade publication of Before Easter After, originally published in a limited edition at $1,000. Hundreds of rarely seen images by legendary photographer Lynn Goldsmith offer an intimate portrait of rock ’n’ roll icon Patti Smith during a transformative moment in her career. Images of Smith performing on stage combine with candid behind-the-scenes photographs and striking studio shoots to create a deeply personal look at the singer during her rise to fame. The photographs include Smith’s life-changing accident while on tour in 1977 and the aftermath, as well as closeup, empathetic portraits that reveal Smith’s self-assurance, her defiance of cultural norms, and her effortless poise. This poignant visual narrative is punctuated throughout by Smith’s original poetry and song lyrics. This book is both a glimpse into a fabled time in music history, documenting a young artist creating what turned out to be a revolutionary work, as well as a celebration of an enduring partnership between two close friends who continue to be creative collaborators to this day.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Riveting, elegant, humorous—this "picaresque voyage through Patti Smith’s dreams and life, blending fiction and reality, conjured characters and actual ones” (The New York Times) is a moving and original work, a touchstone for our turbulent times. Illustrated by Smith’s signature Polaroids. Following a run of new year’s concerts at San Francisco’s legendary Fillmore, Patti Smith finds herself tramping the coast of Santa Cruz, about to embark on a year of solitary wandering. Unfettered by logic or time, she draws us into her private wonderland, in which she debates intellectual grifters and spars with the likes of a postmodern Cheshire Cat. Then, in February 2016, a surreal lunar year begins, bringing unexpected turns, heightened mischief, and inescapable sorrow. For Smith—inveterately curious, always exploring, always writing—this becomes a year of reckoning with the changes in life’s gyre: with loss, aging, and a dramatic shift in the political landscape of America. Taking us from California to the Arizona desert, from a Kentucky farm to the hospital room of a valued mentor, Smith melds the western landscape with her own dreamscape in a haunting, poetic blend of fact and fiction. As a stranger tells her, “Anything is possible. After all, it’s the Year of the Monkey.” But as Smith heads toward a new decade in her own life, she offers this balm to the reader: her wisdom, wit, gimlet eye, and above all, a rugged hope for a better world. Including a new chapter, "Epilogue of an Epilogue," and ten new photos, Year of the Monkey “reminds us that despair and possibility often spring from the same source” (Los Angeles Times).

In linked pieces, singer/songwriter Patti Smith tells the story of a man on a journey to see the Southern Cross, who is reflecting upon his life and fighting the illness that is consuming him. Through this collection of metaphoric and dreamy poems, "a singular, glowing vision of Robert Mapplethorpe develops and emerges" (William S. Burroughs). Photos.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the National Book Award–winning author of Just Kids: a “sublime collection of true stories … and wild imaginings that take us to the very heart of who Patti Smith is” (Vanity Fair), told through the cafés and haunts she has worked in around the world. Patti Smith calls this bestselling work “a roadmap to my life.” M Train begins in the tiny Greenwich Village café where Smith goes every morning for black coffee, ruminates on the world as it is and the world as it was, and writes in her notebook. Through prose that shifts fluidly between dreams and reality, past and present, we travel to Frida Kahlo’s Casa Azul in Mexico; to the fertile moon terrain of Iceland; to a ramshackle seaside bungalow in New York’s Far Rockaway that Smith acquires just before Hurricane Sandy hits; to the West 4th Street subway station, filled with the sounds of the Velvet Underground after the death of Lou Reed; and to the graves of Genet, Plath, Rimbaud, and Mishima. Woven throughout are reflections on the writer’s craft and on artistic creation. Here, too, are singular memories of Smith’s life in Michigan and the irremediable loss of her husband, Fred Sonic Smith. Braiding despair with hope and consolation, illustrated with her signature Polaroids, M Train is a meditation on travel, detective shows, literature, and coffee. It is a powerful, deeply moving book by one of the most remarkable multiplatform artists at work today. Featuring a postscript with five new photos from Patti Smith

In this small, luminous memoir, the National Book Award-winner Patti Smith revisits the most sacred experiences of her early years, with truths so vivid they border on the surreal. The author entwines her childhood self - and its ''clear, unspeakable joy'' - with memories both real and envisioned from her twenties on New York''s MacDougal Street, the street of cafés. Woolgathering was completed in Michigan, on Patti Smith''s 45th birthday and originally published in a slim volume from Raymond Foye''s Hanuman Books. Twenty years later, Bloomsbury is proud to present it in a much augmented edition, featuring writing that was omitted from the book''s first printing, along with new photographs and illustrations.

"In lyric essays, a story, poems, and photographs, Smith illuminates the whirl of chance and choice that stokes a writer''s imagination, recounting her fascination on the eve of a trip to Paris with Simone Weil and an evocative, accidentally discovered film about Stalin''s mass deportation of Estonians. In France, a gravestone, a televised figure-skating competition, a meal, and a garden all converge in what becomes Devotion, [a] ... fairy tale about a young, displaced Estonian skater and a solitary dealer in rare objects and arms. This ... fable about creativity and obsession, possession and freedom is followed by a meditation on how a work of art is, for other artists, a call to action"--Booklist, 08/01/2017.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A deeply moving and brilliantly idiosyncratic visual book of days by the National Book Award–winning author of Just Kids and M Train, featuring more than 365 images and reflections that chart Smith’s singular aesthetic—inspired by her wildly popular Instagram. ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Variety, Pitchfork, PopSugar In 2018, without any plan or agenda for what might happen next, Patti Smith posted her first Instagram photo: her hand with the simple message “Hello Everybody!” Known for shooting with her beloved Land Camera 250, Smith started posting images from her phone including portraits of her kids, her radiator, her boots, and her Abyssinian cat, Cairo. Followers felt an immediate affinity with these miniature windows into Smith’s world, photographs of her daily coffee, the books she’s reading, the graves of beloved heroes—William Blake, Dylan Thomas, Sylvia Plath, Simone Weil, Albert Camus. Over time, a coherent story of a life devoted to art took shape, and more than a million followers responded to Smith’s unique aesthetic in images that chart her passions, devotions, obsessions, and whims. Original to this book are vintage photographs: anniversary pearls, a mother’s keychain, and a husband’s Mosrite guitar. Here, too, are photos from Smith’s archives of life on and off the road, train stations, obscure cafés, a notebook always nearby. In wide-ranging yet intimate daily notations, Smith shares dispatches from her travels around the world. With over 365 photographs taking you through a single year, A Book of Days is a new way to experience the expansive mind of the visionary poet, writer, and performer. Hopeful, elegiac, playful—and complete with an introduction by Smith that explores her documentary process—A Book of Days is a timeless offering for deeply uncertain times, an inspirational map of an artist’s life.

Auguries of Innocence is the first book of poetry from Patti Smith in more than a decade. It marks a major accomplishment from a poet and performer who has inscribed her vision of our world in powerful anthems, ballads, and lyrics. In this intimate and searing collection of poems, Smith joins in that great tradition of troubadours, journeymen, wordsmiths, and artists who respond to the world around them in fresh and original language. Her influences are eclectic and striking: Blake, Rimbaud, Picasso, Arbus, and Johnny Appleseed. Smith is an American original; her poems are oracles for our times.

Patti Smith’s National Book Award–winning memoir, now richly illustrated with new material and never-before-seen photographs Patti’s Smith’s exquisite prose is generously illustrated in this full-color edition of her classic coming-of-age memoir, Just Kids. New York locations vividly come to life where, as young artists, Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe met and fell in love: a first apartment in Brooklyn, Times Square with John and Yoko’s iconic billboard, Max’s Kansas City, or the gritty fire escape of the Hotel Chelsea. The extraordinary people who passed through their lives are also pictured: Sam Shepard, Harry Smith, William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg. Along with never-before-published photographs, drawings, and ephemera, this edition captures a moment in New York when everything was possible. And when two kids seized their destinies as artists and soul mates in this inspired story of love and friendship.

HORSES Gloria (In Excelsis Deo) Redondo Beach Birdland Free Money Kimberly Fire of Unknown Origin Break It Up Land Elegie RADIO ETHIOPIA Ask the Angels Ain''t It Strange Poppies Pissing in a River Pumping (My Heart) Distant Fingers Chiklets Radio Ethiopia/Abyssinia EASTER Till Victory Space Monkey Because the Night Ghost Dance Babelogue Rock n Roll Nigger We Three 25th Floor High on Rebellion Godspeed Easter WAVE Frederick Dancing Barefoot Revenge Citizen Ship Seven Ways of Going Broken Flag Wave Hymn DREAM OF LIFE People Have the Power Up There Down There Paths That Cross Somalia Wild Leaves Dream of Life It Takes Time Where Duty Calls Going Under As the Night Goes By Looking for You (I Was) The Jackson Song Memorial Song GONE AGAIN Gone Again Beneath the Southern Cross About a Boy My Madrigal Summer Cannibals Dead to the World Wing Ravens Fireflies Farewell Reel Come Back Little Sheba PEACE AND NOISE Waiting Underground Whirl Away 1959 Don''t Say Nothing Dead City Blue Poles Death Singing Memento Mori Last Call GUNG HO One Voice Lo and Beholden Boy Cried Wolf Persuasion Gone Pie China Bird Glitter in Their Eyes Strange Messengers Grateful Upright Come New Party Libbie''s Song Gung Ho TRAMPIN'' Trampin'' Jubilee Mother Rose Stride of the Mind Cartwheels Gandhi Trespasses In My Blakean Year Cash Peaceable Kingdom Radio Baghdad

"Features 250 black-and-white photographs Smith took over the past four decades. Land 250 - whose title also refers to the vintage Polaroid camera Smith used - presents images that appear both weathered and timeless: craggy stone walls, spare interiors, and near-abstract still lifes. Anecdotes accompany many of the photos"--Bookforum website.

Un nuevo libro de memorias de la autora de Éramos unos niños, ganadora del National Book Award: «El año del Mono es la obra que más se parece a mí». «Milagroso. [...] Una obra maestra. [...] Smith resplandece; se mueve por el mundo como un viajero en el tiempo, un espía, un vagabundo en la tierra de la literatura y la vida. Es un espejo humano.»- Maria Popova, Brain Pickings Al contemplar mi imagen en la superficie gris mercurio de la tostadora, me fijé en que parecía joven y vieja al mismo tiempo. Son las dos de la madrugada de la Nochevieja de 2015 cuando Patti Smith llega al Dream Motel, junto a la playa de Santa Cruz, tras dar un concierto en la legendaria sala Fillmore de San Francisco. Acaba de cumplir setenta años. En la primera mañana del año sale a dar un paseo y toma su primera polaroid del rótulo del hotel, con el que mantiene una lúcida conversación, como una Alicia moderna en su particular País de las Maravillas. La charla le inspira unos versos y decide volver a su habitación, desde cuya terraza escucha las olas y piensa en su amigo Sandy Pearlman, el famoso productor musical, que lleva dos días en coma. Él fue la persona que le sugirió en su juventud que montara una banda de rock. Así comienza un viaje por lugares como la Costa Oeste, el desierto de Arizona, Manhattan o Kentucky, pero también por parajes recordados o imaginados, del mundo exterior y del interior, en el que Patti Smith nos permite deambular a su lado como sus acompañantes más íntimos. ENGLISH DESCRIPTION New York Times Best Seller From the National Book Award-winning author of Just Kids and M Train, a profound, beautifully realized memoir in which dreams and reality are vividly woven into a tapestry of one transformative year. Following a run of New Year''s concerts at San Francisco''s legendary Fillmore, Patti Smith finds herself tramping the coast of Santa Cruz, about to embark on a year of solitary wandering. Unfettered by logic or time, she draws us into her private wonderland with no design, yet heeding signs--including a talking sign that looms above her, prodding and sparring like the Cheshire Cat. In February, a surreal lunar year begins, bringing with it unexpected turns, heightened mischief, and inescapable sorrow. In a stranger''s words, "Anything is possible: after all, it''s the Year of the Monkey." For Smith--inveterately curious, always exploring, tracking thoughts, writing--the year evolves as one of reckoning with the changes in life''s gyre: with loss, aging, and a dramatic shift in the political landscape of America. Smith melds the western landscape with her own dreamscape. Taking us from California to the Arizona desert; to a Kentucky farm as the amanuensis of a friend in crisis; to the hospital room of a valued mentor; and by turns to remembered and imagined places, this haunting memoir blends fact and fiction with poetic mastery. The unexpected happens; grief and disillusionment set in. But as Smith heads toward a new decade in her own life, she offers this balm to the reader: her wisdom, wit, gimlet eye, and above all, a rugged hope for a better world.

A revised and updated version of the artist''s collected lyrics An American original, Patti Smith is a multi-disciplined artist and performer. Her work is rooted in poetry, which infused her 1975 landmark album, Horses. A declaration of existence, Horses was described as ''three chords merged with the power of the word''; it was graced with the now iconic portrait by Robert Mapplethorpe, the subject of her award-winning memoir Just Kids. Initially published in 1998, Patti Smith''s Complete Lyrics was a testimony to her uncompromising poetic power. Now, on the fortieth anniversary of the release of Smith''s groundbreaking album, Collected Lyrics has been revised and expanded with more than thirty-five additional songs, including her first, ''Work Song'', written for Janis Joplin in 1970, and her most current, ''Writer''s Song'', to be recorded in 2015. The collection is liberally illustrated with original manuscripts of lyrics from Smith''s extensive archive. Patti Smith''s work continues to retain its relevance, whether controversial, political, romantic or spiritual. Collected Lyrics offers forty-five years of song, an enduring commemoration of Smith''s unique contribution to the canon of rock and roll.