Explore the literary world of Patti Smith through eight songs
Patti Smith is widely considered the poet laureate of rock and roll. While affectionately known as the godmother of punk, Smith is more an artist than a musician, as her work integrates prose, poetry, protest, and beyond.
For some, Smith’s writing might have been their introduction to her music as her memoir, Just Kids, dominated bestseller lists and swept book prizes. Even at the very start of her career, Smith was always a writer before she became a rock star. Alongside her albums, she has published poetry collections and experimental prose projects. Often dedicating tracks on her albums to reciting poetry rather than rocking out, Smith’s music and literature are intrinsically linked.
There would never have been one without the other. Patti Smith never wanted to be a musician. She always wanted to be a writer. Her career as a singer came as an accident after gaining attention for putting her poetry readings to music. She rarely wrote songs but instead wrote sonnets to be sung. Everything about Smith’s music career comes from her deep love and passion for the written and spoken word.
As an artist, she is totally and utterly informed by writers like Arthur Rimbaud, Allen Ginsberg, Albert Camus and countless others who inspired a young Smith to leave her hometown and seek out a poetic lifestyle. Whether she’s referencing her seemingly encyclopedic knowledge of classic works, drawing links to the beat generation she caught the tail end of, or even reworking her own poetry into song, almost every Patti Smith song has a connection to literature somewhere.
Exploring some of her most literary tracks or her references to works that greatly influence her writing, here is a lightning tour of Patti Smith’s literary world.
The literary world of Patti Smith:
Horses – Arthur Rimbaud and William Burroughs
The debut album Horses introduced Patti Smith to the world immediately as the punk poet she’d become known as. ‘Land’ stands as its central point; this epic, three-part rolling track houses what appears to be Smith’s simple artistic manifesto at the time: “Go Rimbaud!”
When delving into the literary world of Smith, there is no writer as singularly or as vitally important to her as the French poet Arthur Rimbaud. “The language within Rimbaud to me was intoxicating,” Smith told the LA Review Of Books, adding: “I admit, at 16 years old, I didn’t always understand what I was reading, but it really didn’t matter. The language to me was so beautiful, and I was just drawn to it.” Discovering the symbolist poet as a teenager, the world has Rimbaud to thank for Smith, inspiring her to delve deeper into her writing and seek out richer images and meanings. He also inspired her to cast off suburbia for something bigger. “Of course, the work was paramount, but I was also fascinated by the lifestyle of someone like Rimbaud,” Smith adds, as the poet was a driving force behind her decision to run off to New York and live as an artist.
When reading Smith’s poetry or lyrics, the similarities between her work and Rimbaud exist. She is wordy and winding, spiralling deep into particular images and imbuing them with rich meaning, just as the French writer did. On the title track of her debut album, there are over 1,000 words. It’s an insane amount for a rock song, often dipping into total nonsense or confusion. But one clear instruction stands out as she repeats over and over, “Go Rimbaud” like a call to herself and her listeners.
Another one of her biggest influences exists in this track. Holding hands with the 19th-century French poet is a more contemporary figure, William S. Burroughs. When Smith moved to New York and into the Chelsea Hotel in 1969, she just about caught the tail end of the beat generation. Ten years prior, in the same hotel, Burroughs wrote some of the more defining texts of the era, including Naked Lunch.
Naturally, Smith was incredibly inspired by the pioneering writers of the generation with their loose approach to genre and style. In ‘Horses’, a figure called Johnny emerges as she references The Wild Boys, Burrough’s influential 1971 novel. Merging her traditional and more rock and roll reference points into one song, this one track perfectly epitomises Smith’s literary life.
‘Kimberly’ – T.S Eliot
Sometimes, Smith’s literary references are so effortless it’s like they slipped in by accident from her vast knowledge. Throughout her entire discography, there are countless occasions of blink-and-you’ll-miss-it nods to her literary idols. One of the slickest comes on ‘Kimberly’, Smith’s ode to her baby sister.
An almost apocalyptic track, Smith recalls a fire that broke out as lightning struck a barn close to their childhood home in the days after her sister was born. Seeing the suburban world around her as a strange and dangerous place, she references T.S Eliot’s epic poem, The Waste Land. Considered to be the most important poem of the 20th century, Eliot’s poem also explores the landscape in front of him, reconsidering it after the horrors of World War One.
With both songs mixing horror, home and innocence, the connection is there. Smith sings, “So I ran through the fields as the bats with their baby vein faces / Burst from the barn and flames in a violent violet sky.” Recounting the line in the final part of the poem, titled ‘What The Thunder Said’, the poem reads, “And bats with baby faces in the violet light / Whistled, and beat their wings”.
‘Because The Night’ – Emily Brontë
The story of Patti Smith’s biggest hit, ‘Because The Night’, is well-documented. What started as a Bruce Springsteen song that ‘The Boss’ couldn’t seem to finish became Smith’s opus on love and longing. Once the track swapped hands, Smith packed the verses with her signature literary style, seeming to reference classic works without really noticing or meaning to.
On the surface, ‘Because The Night’ is a song about her long-distance relationship with her husband, Fred ‘Sonic’ Smith, but the singer has since talked about an accidental connection to Emily Brontë’s gothic novel. After writing a foreword for a special edition of Wuthering Heights, Smith gave a benefit concert to raise money for the Brontë Museum in their Howarth hometown. Drawing a connection between this pining tune and the love between Heathcliffe and Cathy in the novel, her lyrics gained a new, more literary life as an anthem for the gothic couple. Reminiscent of the climax as Cathy goes mad with longing before her death, seeming to spiral around a life of regret for being separated from Heathcliff, she says, “Oh, I’m burning! I wish I were out of doors! I wish I were a girl again, half savage and hardy, and free.”
With this in mind, Smith’s bridge seems informed by one of her favourite novels as she sings: “Without you, I cannot live / Forgive, the yearning burning / I believe it’s time, too real to feel / So touch me now, touch me now, touch me now / Because the night belongs to lovers.”
‘April Fool’ – Nikolai Gogol
Like French poets and writers Rimbaud and Camus, Smith was also hugely influenced by Russian literature. Regularly referencing classic Russian works, one of her favourites is Nikolai Gogol’s tender story, The Overcoat, which deals with class, poverty and the sad joy of simple pleasures as the protagonist saves up for a beautiful new coat, which is then stolen from him.
In ‘April Fool,’ Smith sings, “We’ll ride like writers ride / Neither rich nor broke / We’ll race through alleyways / In our tattered cloaks so,” using the novel as a metaphor for loving a person in whatever state they come. Later in the song, she also references Gogol’s famous novel Dead Souls and the second edition was set ablaze in a fire, losing it forever. She sings, “We’ll burn all of our poems / Add to God’s debris.”
Born on April 1st, April Fools Day, Gogol stands out to Smith, deeming him a “genius” along with the entire class of Russia’s 19th-century writers: Leo Tolstoy, Mikhail Bulgakov, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Anton Chekhov and beyond.
‘Banga’ – Mikhail Bulgakov
Sometimes, Patti Smith’s literary references aren’t veiled but are all-consuming. Several songs by the artist simply retell the tale of her favourite characters or writers, and ‘Banga’ is a perfect example. The title track of her 2012 album, the record deals heavily with death and writes several eulogies for cultural figures, including Amy Winehouse (‘This Is The Girl’) and Maria Schneider (‘Maria’).
But the titular track deals with grief through a literary lens. Another nod to her love for Russian literature, the track references Bulgakov’s novel The Master and Margarita. Banga is the protagonist’s loyal dog and closest confidant who holds all of his master’s complaints and worries, and when his master dies, the dog waits forever for their reunion in heaven. In the track, Smith sings, “Loyalty rests in the heart of a dog.”
‘My Blakean Year’ – William Blake
Another outright literary reference comes on the track ‘My Blakean Year’ from the 2004 album Trampin’. Smith’s later work deals more and more with literary, cultural and artistic reference points as she reflects on her life through the work of people who have inspired her. This is clearer than ever in this haunting and sparse ballad.
Dedicated to the writer and artist William Blake, Smith deals with the idea of following a clear calling, even through all the pain and strife that brings. In a blog, she said of the figure, “His life was a testament of faith over strife. He suffered poverty, humiliation and misunderstanding, yet he continued to do his work and maintained a lifelong belief in his vision.”
To Smith, Blake symbolises utter dedication and commitment, adding, “He has served as a good example in facing my own difficulties and feeling a certain satisfaction in doing so.”
‘Easter’ – The Bible
There is maybe no text quite as important to Smith’s work as the bible. Raised in a family of Jehovah’s Witnesses, she had a deeply religious upbringing and education. However, as a rebellious teen, she cast off the religion of her youth but kept hold of her fascination with its language and symbols.
The Bible and religious imagery appear on all her albums, but never clearer than her 1987 release, Easter. Tracks like ‘Privilege (Set Me Free)’ steal direct lines from the text as she says, “The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want.” Even in the liner notes of the record, Smith quotes from the bible, “I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course”, draws crosses under the credits and shares Arthur Rimbaud’s first communion portrait.
On the titular track, Smith merges her two main inspirations: Rimbaud and God. Telling a tale of the French poet convincing his younger sister that the way to reach God is not through prayer but through the sky itself, the lyrics imbue everything natural with a dash of holy spirit.
The soaring song climaxes with a kind of sermon that reaches beyond the realm of rock and roll into the spiritual awakening we all hope is waiting for us.
‘Gloria’ – Patti Smith
Realistically, every single song Smith has ever written references her own work because it is so deeply rooted in her poetic origins. There are countless occasions where Smith pauses the punk to simply be a poet, reciting her work and weaving pieces of earlier poems into new tracks.
But on the opening track to her debut album, Smith led with her poetry as a statement that she was not just a singer; she was a writer, a poet, a true artist.
While the chorus of ‘Gloria’ is taken from Van Morrison’s band, Them, Smith totally transformed the track into an epic punk number by merging it with her poem Oath.
Written in 1970, Oath really is the origin of Smith’s music career. It was one of the first poetry pieces she tried putting to music, performing it at shows as early as 1972, long before she recorded a song. After casting off her religious upbringing, Oath, and in turn ‘Gloria’, stand as her new moral manifesto of sole responsibility and control.
The poem’s opening would become possibly the most defining and striking lyrics the artist ever penned. But reading the poem in full feels like witnessing the coming together of all of Smith’s literary reference points: Rimbaud’s style, the imagery of religion, the rebellion of the beat generation and the rock rhythm of the punk icon she would become: “Jesus died for somebody’s sins / but not mine”.
