What would happen if Patti Smith didn’t record “Horses”? Will we read her books? Could we highlight her photographs? Will we follow her on Instagram? In short, would she be the Patti Smith we all know? The truth is that she never managed to surpass her debut album, which came out about fifty years ago. He may have put out a few more records—very good, good, or hackneyed—but he didn’t dare to get into that exciting recitation of verse that sounded like songs written by a New York-raised Rimbaud woman.

No one expected that this would interrupt her career in the 80s. She married, gave birth to two children and lived with her family in an old stone house in the suburbs of Detroit, by the river. Although he had already published several collections of short-page poetry, in the fall of ’91 he decided to write a series of prose works, following the advice of Sam Shepard. It’s hard to write about anything. But it’s worth nothing more. The Wool Gathering was the vessel from which grew the books that made her equally famous as a writer. From her shared history with Robert Mapplethorpe and The M Train—both translated into our language—to Year of the Monkey, Patti Smith has put together a tangle of childhood memories, travel notes, everyday images and photographs, and he offered it to us. as if he were a rock version of Max Sebbald.

Patti Smith saw her husband and younger brother die within a month, friends and associates leave prematurely, and it ended up making her treat the world with great tenderness. Her youthful anger softened and she became sweet and approachable, but above all generous, with the joy and guilt of a survivor who has to live the “dream of a life” as she sang. So here she has long ceased to be wild and has acquired the qualities of a peaceful woman who is at the same time a grandmother, a mother, and a godmother: she does not stop feeding us with her myths, she seems to give us warmth. hugs, she allows us to have access to her iconography. It’s a fact that Patti Smith specializes in iconography and prayer, and her new book confirms it. But even when she bows or naively admires, ending with picturesqueness, we forgive her. Because perhaps her naivete reminds us of how mean we’ve become.

“I don’t think about anything. I remember how my mother sat like that. And I ask: “What is it, mother?” And she says: “Oh, nothing.”

The Book of Days (Bloomsbury Publishing, p. 400, 2022) is not really a book. This is a photo album with captions that look like small Japanese poems. It’s a warehouse, a tool box. It is a calendar, a calendar, an agenda marked with the death dates of her loved ones. This is a summary of her Instagram account. Its analog version. On 366 photographs, it includes as many days as a leap year, the personal coordinates of the atlas materialize before our eyes. Black-and-white Polaroids taken with an old camera, digital cell phone photos, childhood photos and family moments are mixed with pictures taken by friends and archival materials from the world library, our common trampled estate.

I make a shortlist of twelve photographs for each month of the year. Pile of papers on the floor of her house (January), her daughter in the snow with roses (February), her bed in the Rockaway, her hermit (March), Bolano’s chair (April), her boots (May)), sleeping man (June), a mug of coffee (July), a dirt road with potholes full of water (August), a sawmill in Thessaloniki (September), a horseshoe (October), a white horse (November), her hand and a notebook (December). The more he tries to save an everyday gesture from oblivion, the more touching it becomes. The more it moves towards the bend zone, the more it contracts in it.

In the January 29 photo, she is sitting in a room full of books and objects. With a hand on his cheek, he looks distracted. He wears black clothes and has gray hair. The caption reads: “I don’t think about anything. I remember my mother sitting like this. And I ask: “What is it, mother?”. And she says, “Oh, nothing.” And now I know what nothing is. And although she is the same age as my mother, she reminds me of my grandmother. She studied singing until she got married and had to quit. I remember her sitting in the kitchen. Just like lost. But I didn’t ask her anything.