Patti Smith adds two San Francisco appearances

[L French <lrfrench>]

PATTI SMITH ADDS TWO SAN FRANCISCO APPEARANCES 

 

 

After selling out her November 14th acoustic show celebrating the 30th Anniversary of Horses at the Great American Music Hall, Patti Smith has added two additional San Francisco appearances for Sunday November 13th. 

 

At 7:00pm Patti Smith and Lenny Kaye will appear at All Saints Church in the Haight-Asbury for a poetry reading and acoustic set that will be followed by a book-signing for Pattis beautiful new volume of poetry, Auguries of Innocence. 

 

That same evening at 9:30pm Patti will travel cross-town to do a benefit poetry reading at the Victoria Theater in the Mission district to benefit the Poetry Center at San Francisco State University. 

 

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Sunday November 13  9:30 pm 

The Victoria Theatre 2961 16th Street (at Mission), San Francisco 

 

Tickets: $25, general seating www.victoriatheatre.org 

ticket information: 415-863-7576. 

 

Proceeds from this special performance will benefit the Poetry Center, which celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2004, and since 1954 has presented many of the great poets in public performance of their works, including William Carlos Williams, Langston Hughes, and many of the earliest recordings by the Beats and San Francisco Renaissance poets.   

 

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Sunday November 13  7:00 pm 

All Saints Church 1350 Waller Street (at Masonic), San Francisco 

 

This is a ticketed event. Tickets are free with the purchase of a Patti Smith or Lenny Kaye book from The Booksmith. Books may be purchased at our store prior to the event, or at All Saints Church on the day of the event. Doors open and books go on sale starting at 5:30 pm on the day of the 

 

 

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AUGERIES OF INNOCENE REVIEWED 

Ecco Press, New York. Hardcover. 80 pp 

 





To see a world in a grain of sand 

And a heaven in a wild flower, 

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand 

And eternity in an hour. 

 

William Blake 

 

 

Patti Smith's latest book is a masterful culmination of all her poetic work to date, drawing as it does on her long and varied influences, including Arthur Rimbaud, Joan of Arc, Pablo Picasso, Virginia Woolf and of course, William Blake, whose famed poem Auguries of Innocence, has been borrowed as the title of this superb collection. It is Blake, the visionary British artist whose influence is most pronounced on the 26 poems included here, but especially on "Worthy the Lamb Slain for Us," which directly addresses Blake's poem "The Lamb." Here, Ms. Smith gives Blake's innocence an edge of modern day horror, relating it to modern man's cruelty, as demonstrated by this passage: "And he, a governed soul, broad shouldered with eyes like Blake, lamented who bred thee, nursed thee on mead and flowers, as he ripped her apart." 

 

Obviously, for readers expecting a kinder gentler Patti Smith, it's best to be forewarned, as this book, despite its title, is no collection of innocent auguries or vapid verses. Indeed, Smith gives us a vision of atrocities and horror which might give even the most seasoned reader a reason to stand up and shout against the fear and madness that seem to have descended on today's world like a biblical plague of locusts. Smith addresses global injustices, animal extinction, death, sorrow and loss, and does it all with the voice of a true seer. As Blake did, Smith contrasts the inherent innocence of children against the unholy terrors of their exploitation, whether as in Blake's time, by taking children and turning them into mistreated laborers, or as is done today, by stripping away their innocence away through various forms of mass media, an even more insidious method, since it can happen so subtly, a child or parent may never even notice it occurring. 

 

Several of the poems are vivid and horrific reminders of what the so-called civilized leaders of this planet have done in the name of peace and progress during the last century. Namely, bombing innocent men, women and children who have no connection to the political agenda's or visions of grandeur espoused by their misguided leaders. Three separate poems address specific bombings, including George Bush's bombing of Baghdad, Iraq, Ronald Reagan's bombing of Benghazi, Libya and Adolph Hitler's bombing of Guernica, Spain. And ironically, Smith is able to transmute the horrors of modern warfare into a truly touching and beautiful artistic vision, as in the lengthy poem, "Birds of Iraq" where Patti speaks about the supposed sanity of America's launching a preemptive strike on Iraq, by contrasting it with the madness and hallucinations of Virginia Woolf, whose loss of control over her own life, ultimately resulted in her tragic suicide. Likewise Pablo Picasso's outrage over the bombing of
 the Basque village of Guernica resulted in that artist's masterpiece, and Ms. Smith imagines the horrors of the that fateful Spanish day in 1937 without flinching: "...She crawled with one shoe the other foot gone a trail sticky and warm... dripping blood from the wounds of Spain." 

 

In short Auguries Of Innocence is a not to be missed experience, an exquisite gift for poetry lovers everywhere. 

 

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