Happy Thanksgiving, Patti Smith

Patti Smith won the National Book Award for Just Kids in 2010, which chronicled her early days in New York and her eventual rise in the rock world. Her precision of observation and her verbal skill at invoking that period clearly disintinguished her as a serious author.

Now Patti Smith returns with Woolgathering, a memoir of her early childhood and days at cafes in Greenwich Village. First written as a 3X4 book for Hanuman Books twenty years ago, she expanded its journal-like entries for this edition. She says that everything in the book is true and hopes that "in some measure it will fill the reader with a vague and curious joy." And it does. She describes memories of her days in rural southern New Jersey trapsing about the woods with her dog and days of creative dreaming as a child.

Only 76 pages, it is a rich delight. Let me quote from the Note to the reader:

"In 1991 I lived on the outskirts of Detroit with my husband and two children in an old stone house set by a canal that emptied into Lake Saint Clair. Ivy and morning glory climbed the deteriorating walls. A profusion of grapevines and wild roses draped the balcony, where doves nested in their tangles. ..Our unruly patch boasted an abundance of wildflowers, lilacs, two ancient willows, and a single pear tree...I would sit for hours, when my chores were done and the children at school,beneath the willows, lost in thought. That was the atmosphere of my life as I began to compose Woolgathering."

It is really worth a read.