More Elegy than Memoir (First Reaction)

Yes, it is a memoir. But by the end of the book, it became for me a lovely elegy for Robert Mapplethorpe and the friendship that they had built and that Smith lost with his death. Maybe it is just my emotionally unstable state these days, but I found myself crying at the end. Very simple and elegant book, I never felt the heavy handedness or self-centered quality that inhabits most memoir.

I loved the vignette where the book gets its title. I need to remember to take my students seriously, because they take themselves seriously. They are just kids, but they are creative human beings as well.

Part of why I loved reading this book is because Patti Smith and her music has been a constant since my sister gave me Horses when I was 15 or 16, and then finding a copy of Radio Ethiopia at the k-mart in Victoria the next year. When I came to Austin for a speech tournament, I went to Grok Books (now Bookpeople) and found a copy of Smith's poetry. I used a quote from her liner notes to Radio Ethiopia to introduce my poems I was reading in speech tournaments. The year Dream of Life came out I was teaching in Beeville and the uprising in China was occuring so close after the fall of the Berlin wall. I remember listening to People have the Power and believing it.

Several years ago, Patti Smith played a free concert in Waterloo park. Lisa and I left the children with the grandparents and stood in the cold drizzly park to see her. One of the best concert experiences ever. During Gung Ho, a song about Viet Nam and Ho Chi Min, the Star Flight landing at Breckenridge added a surreal element to the whole event.

Thanks Richard for choosing this book.