I found this to be a nice book to hang with- It’s not as powerful as some of the things that she writes, but it feels nice and intimate. I love her poetry in the way her words flow, you don’t get that in most books written nowadays ( )

A poetic little memoir, of childhood, of dreams, of the evolution of a dreamer and an artist, and here at least are they not the same. Worth savoring slowly. ( )

Woolgathering
By Patti Smith
2011, New Directions
Hardcover, 80pp

"...I am moved by a sense of longing to be again what I was not."

It makes sense that it was Rikki Ducornet who pointed me to Patti Smith, specifically this exuberant little memoir. Like Ducornet, language is clay in Smith's hands. Every other sentence is worthy of highlighting, and the comma-splice is employed with artistic brilliance. The pages of this gem will not fail to tug at your heart. ( )

I am a bit biased
( )

Smith remembers her childhood and her childhood fantasies in New Jersey. One of those fantasies were of the people she could hear, but never see in an empty field she passed on long leisurely walks with her brother and sister. She thought of them as “the woolgatherers.”

"I believed they were there, the people. I could hear them, now and then, murmuring and whistling as if behind a wall of cotton. I could hear them, but I could never make out the language they were speaking nor the melodies they were weaving."

Daydreaming, she aspired to be one of them. In this slim book of reminisces, she moves effortlessly from prose poems to verse to prose, and from subjectivity to objectivity. This new expanded edition is illustrated with photographs, some by Smith, and some by other photographers, including family snapshots.