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Book Cover for: Early Work 1970-1979, Patti Smith

Early Work 1970-1979

Patti Smith

Patti Smith - poet, songwriter, performer. Collected here are selections from Smith's writings over the decade in which she made a lasting impact on America's underground scene. Smith's work evokes the experimentation, the longing, and the desire to break boundaries of those pre-punk days. Early Work: 1970-1979 contains poems and prose from her chap-books Seventh Heaven, Ha! Ha! Houdini! (complete), and Witt, as well as selections from her landmark work Babel. Over one-quarter of the works are previously unpublished, chosen from transcriptions of performance pieces, notebook entries, and the author's personal papers. In an introduction, Smith places her writing in the context of the seventies, a time when the consequences of leading a life on the edge were less profound. From obscure publications to well-known anthems, Early Work will bring together all the sides of Patti Smith from the meditative to the explosive. With published and unpublished photos by Robert Mapplethorpe, Judy Linn, and others, this raucous volume will remind people of why Patti Smith became a legend.

Book Details

  • Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
  • Publish Date: Jun 17th, 1995
  • Pages: 192
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 8.25in - 4.87in - 0.64in - 0.53lb
  • EAN: 9780393313017
  • Categories: American - General

About the Author

Smith, Patti: - Patti Smith is a poet, performer, visual artist, and author of M Train and the National Book Award-winning memoir Just Kids. She has twelve albums, has had numerous gallery shows, and continues to give concerts of her music and poetry. Her books include Early Work, The Coral Sea, Witt, Babel, Auguries of Innocence, Woolgathering, Land 250, Trois, and many others. In 2022, Smith was awarded the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize by the Poetry Foundation in recognition of her outstanding lifetime achievement. She lives in New York.

Praise for this book

A poet of distinction.--John Rockwell, New York Times
[Early Work] burns . . . with the galvanizing sense of faith and transcendence that made [Smith] the last of the great rock poets.-- "Entertainment Weekly"
[Early Work] establishes Smith as a visionary belletrist who believed in rock as a spiritual outlet and haven for black sheep--an outpost on a continuum connecting such heroes as poets Arthur Rimbaud and Charles Baudelaire, Amelia Earhart, Harry Houdini and film director Pier Paolo Pasolini to a sexy, androgynous future.--Evelyn McDonnell, Rolling Stone