Patti Smith on the One Desire That Lasts Forever
About this episode
A conversation with Patti Smith, the 'Godmother of Punk,' on her 'Bread of Angels' memoir and the 50th-anniversary 'Horses' tour. Klein explores Smith's childhood — a girl who communed with tortoises and nature, raised by a factory-worker father who cultivated a 'country of the mind' — and how early reading (Pinocchio, Peter Pan, Little Women, the Old Testament) shaped her. The title refers to a childhood passage she recalls: 'All desires save one are fleeting, but that one lasts forever' — the desire to write a poem, her lifelong compass. They discuss her 1967 arrival in a cheap, free New York; the downtown scene of misfits; her identity as a poet and performer rather than a musician; the night Bob Dylan watched her play at the Bitter End; leaving fame to raise a family in Michigan; and her writing discipline. She recommends Pinocchio, Sylvia Plath's poetry, and Bolaño's 2666.