Category: the grind

Patti Smith Month: An Introduction

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What Is Patti Smith Month?

An answer I made up about a thing I made up

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I loathe when people complain about the weather. It’s like complaining about being in a body. Being in a body is 1) the only choice we all have, and 2) essentially a miracle. I’m bored by easy negativity because it’s not creating anything. It simply laments what IS.

Weather is the main way that nature touches us. Even if you live in a city, the weather affects you. One of my favorite things about living in the country is how big of a character the weather is in my life, in the lives of all my friends and neighbors. It’s something we all share, and yet it affects us differently—where Justin’s snowdrifts pile up is different from where mine do, but both of us have blocked windows.

That being said, February is not an easy time to be alive in the northern hemisphere. It’s cold, it can be dark for days. Which is why, two years ago, I created something called Patti Smith Month. It started when I decided to reread her book “Just Kids,” because my friend Scott had gone to the St Mark’s bookstore in search of it (we had recently seen Patti Smith do a reading there in frigidicecold winter). When he got to the bookstore, he couldn’t find it anywhere. He wanted to buy it because I’d told him how much I love it, and because we both loved the way Patti Smith looked at her reading, with her boyish body and her black beanie. We both loved what she said.

He finally asked a clerk at the front of the bookstore where he could find “Just Kids.” In my head, she looked at him like he was an Effing Idiot (because this is how clerks look at you because you ARE one and also they’re tired) (I’ve been there), and said “Her books are all in the back, next to her.”

Patti Smith was in the store at that very moment signing books. Instead of buying the book for himself, he bought me a copy, which he had her inscribe. This is one of my most prized possessions.

As I read this book two years ago, it lit all those little flames inside of me. Some of those flames have to do with being an artist, which has practically become a dirty word these days. Some of those flames have to do with the talismanic powers that we all have to instill our lives with meaning. Some of those flames have to do with wearing menswear and necklaces. Suffice to say: that book is a world I need.

And so I decided that every February, I would re-read it. That’s the beginning. That’s the kindling. Because when I reread it, I relive and remember my own dedication to art-making. I am reminded. I am refreshed. I refurbish my altars and don my Patti Smith shirt, the only shirt with a face on it I’d ever wear. I drink tea in the dark nighttime house and tear up pages of notebooks with words. Sometimes I commit to writing more letters, or revising a long piece, or improving the art on my wall.

This year, I will write a poem every day for the month of February. I will write a letter to a new penpal in the hopes that she wants to write back. I am in the process of beginning an exciting new literary project with a friend of mine, so that will come to fruition, too. I don’t know what else will happen. Patti Smith Month is about saying, I am a maker. And: there is no time but the present.

I believe Patti Smith Month is one of my best ideas. Not only because what it inspires, but because in making February a special month for myself, I have improved my own life. Patti Smith Month is the opposite of complaining about Feburary. It means I look forward to February and the way I’ll spend the month leaning in to the artistry inside me. Remember how environmentalists sometimes tell you that you’re either part of the solution or you’re part of the problem? I disagree. You are both the problem and the solution. So even if Patti Smith Month isn’t what will make your own personal February awesome, find out what will. Then buy yourself a t-shirt and get to work.

“Helluva Effort” (poem) (mine).

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Helluva Effort

 

I don’t truss my chicks

before they’ve watched

the world spin by

for ninety days. I’m

all mussed up

with warnings wrought

by bigblack birds

with swollen beaks

that spout the speech

of ancestry. They eat

what I won’t bite &

squawk in tongues I can’t

commemorate except

to say: I came, I laid

my smallass down

upon the grass;

I did my goddamn

best to leave

a mark & then

I up & left.

in the grasses

Yesterday’s morning poem (mine).

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Just your average morning shoving

 

three goatbutts into a bright blue Kia

then heading off to work. I drive

along the first branch of a river,

past brandnew calves, sideways barns,

and the sign that reads FROST HEAVE

AHEAD which no one’s taken down

because just seeing it makes the green

of the pastures an even sweeter sight.

The silos this morning are brimming

with the years they’ve seen, the guineas

bold enough to eat the grass that runs

along the road, and the local library

has its OPEN flag highfiving the wind.

On days like this, it feels like everyone

and their mother is pushing a wellworn

wheelbarrow in the direction of joy.

 

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(That image is a poemjoke. Do you get it?)

 

Poem with flowers in it (mine).

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Insanity (the good kind)

lalalalalalalalalalala  for Ellie!

The trillium are blooming everywhere & I’m going insane

with happiness. Illegal to harvest & illegal not to love,

the trillium bloom in the forest and where the forest

meets the road. Magenta blooms made of three red petals

with three green understudies. Jack-in-the-pulpit’s likely

nearby, and a stream where the bugs who slide across water

are stretching their legs after winter. The breeze smells like ferns

unfurling their eyes to the sun and the hatless and shoeless

woman I am has her pupils hotglued to the ground.

Poem with some rhythm oh yeah (mine).

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POEM

She can cut a rug right down

its spine. She’s wine for days

and days turn into nighttime

faster than a swine to milk.

She’s not silk or roses, not that

hightime ilk of china saucers

and the cups they keep intact.

Her shoes are blues & blacks,

her hair is factual and brown

& frowns when wet. Who says

she won’t dance until the cows

get out? She says. She’s the one

who cooks the books, dehorns

the calves, dethorns the roses,

disabuses the boys of the notion

she’ll deflower them. After hours

her lights are low, her spirits high,

she’s double-wide, three-ply belting

out her own darn lyrics to the sky.

 

“Big Sigh in Springtime” (poem) (mine).

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Big Sigh in Springtime

It’s complicated, you know: being alive, being outside

at the neighbors’ on one of the first warm nights in half a year,

and there’s a doll-sized lamb frolicking around the porch,

content to be free and not kicked by its mother, almost

too precious to look at. Before we walk the short distance

home, we hear the season’s first peeper: lone screech in the dark

in the beaver pond, waiting in exile until the hatching

of comrades. We walk back with our bowl and our spoons

and the sky all around us: we’re pooped. We’re in love

with each other and our dreams and exhausted.

There’s a car to be fixed and we need a new truck

that can handle the ice. There’s not a hint of crocus

for miles, this cold hilltop bowl unwilling to surrender

her wintertime ways. It’s been nearly a week

since I showered and I still have to choose how we’ll package

our oils to sell at our markets and tomorrow I’ll train

for another small job. I think a lot of people think all I do

is wear dresses outside and eat fruit, and partly

that’s true, but also: I’m tired. Spring’s about to burst

and I’ve yet to finish Middlemarch. I remain widely

unpublished and my nails are like daggers torn sharp

with my teeth. I can’t yet picture where our life

will be planted and I can’t paint my landscape

before the canvas is stretched. My brain’s composed

of colors, painted partly by him and embellished

by me. My grammar’s intuitive, just like the rest of me–

going on gut, gunning on gut, slamming the breaks,

quick-catching a view of what whizzes by while I drive.

I like talking walks and I always walk quickly,

though I’m trying to enjoy walking slower, looking up

and around instead of just down at the mullein

and mushrooms popping up everywhere. These days I’m holding

out hope that my sister moves east and on Thursday I head

to the city by bus to say hi to the Whitney, the subway,

the blossoms, my friends. It’s nice to go south yet painful

to leave my love in the house, sleeping alone in our bed

made for two, sitting alone at the small kitchen table where we rest

all our meals. When I said it’s complicated, being alive, being

outside at night surrounded by grass greening back

to its best summer self, what I meant was I’m tired

and I’m happy and I’m healing and I’m growing

like ginseng–I’m taking my time. In these days before

children, all my time is my own and I covet that time,

sinking deep in the couch with a thick hunk of literature,

putting on earrings just to go down for dinner.

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“So Various” (my poem of last Sunday).

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So Various

1

We walked out to pasture

to feed the pigs, the neighbors’

dog running beside us, shitting

beside us. The clouds were a quilt

of calcite-colored gloom, our field

a carpet of sod turned over by hooves.

2

We sat as the chipmunks called

to each other, ass down in a sea

of tumbled stones. Selenite stacked

like logs, geode after geode

to the wind, our pockets brimmed

with the weight of colored stones.

3

Inside the restaurant painted

the colors of wasabi and ginger, we ate

wasabi and ginger. 80s hits screamed

eternity from speaks all around, even

in the bathroom. A plate of shrimp shumai

like pillows for a clique of mice.

4

We weren’t badly dressed

for the party, but we weren’t

dressed correctly, either. Grown men

in a palette of pastels, ladies drunk

beneath their brims, and the shining

horses racing towards their deaths.

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