- Hardcover: 80 pages
- Publisher: New Directions Publishing; Updated edition (23 Dec 2011)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0811219445
- ISBN-13: 978-0811219440
- Product Dimensions: 18 x 11.2 x 1 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 63,110 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Woolgathering
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More About the Author
Product Description
Review
A poet of distinction New York Times Smith pares down her prose to a state of vivid impressionism, so enigmatic that even ordinary acts - preparing mint tea, nodding off while sewing - take on spiritual weight ... The passages evoking her childhood do reverberate with serene joy ... Writing was not Smith's first choice ... But any fans of her music will not be surprised by her mastery of it here Observer
--This text refers to an alternate
Hardcover
edition.
Product Description
In this small, luminous memoir, the National Book Award-winner Patti Smith revisits the most sacred experiences of her early years, with truths so vivid they border on the surreal. The author entwines her childhood self - and its 'clear, unspeakable joy' - with memories both real and envisioned from her twenties on New York's MacDougal Street, the street of cafes. Woolgathering was completed in Michigan, on Patti Smith's 45th birthday and originally published in a slim volume from Raymond Foye's Hanuman Books. Twenty years later, Bloomsbury is proud to present it in a much augmented edition, featuring writing that was omitted from the book's first printing, along with new photographs and illustrations.
--This text refers to an alternate
Hardcover
edition.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This tiny little book (and it is small, like a thin pack of cards size) is one of my very favourite out of all the ones on my bookshelf!
It consists of prose rather than 'poems'.
It is so well written: little intimate stories from Patti's childhood, it feels like she's sharing her most private and treasured thoughts/fantasies/secrets with you and only you as you read.
Very difficult to put my finger on what exactly makes these simple little tales so transfixing - but I guess if I could do that I could write like it myself! How do you quantify genius?
If you read my other Patti Smith book reviews you'll see I'm no sycophant. I admit I am a huge fan of Patti's music, prose & poetry but if I think it's rubbish I'll say so!
On this occasion though, this book, however small, is GREAT!
It consists of prose rather than 'poems'.
It is so well written: little intimate stories from Patti's childhood, it feels like she's sharing her most private and treasured thoughts/fantasies/secrets with you and only you as you read.
Very difficult to put my finger on what exactly makes these simple little tales so transfixing - but I guess if I could do that I could write like it myself! How do you quantify genius?
If you read my other Patti Smith book reviews you'll see I'm no sycophant. I admit I am a huge fan of Patti's music, prose & poetry but if I think it's rubbish I'll say so!
On this occasion though, this book, however small, is GREAT!
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
7 reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Beautiful!
8 Feb 2010
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
This is just awesome; I'd been looking for it for the longest time and was so glad to finally find it. Patti is such a wonderful writer, conjuring up such vivid images with her words. She shares so many childhood memories here, its so interesting to hear from whence she came :)
Jo
Jo
12 of 15 people found the following review helpful
A mysterious and charming little book
7 Dec 1999
Format:Paperback
It fits in the palm of your hand and unfolds mysterious narrative & lyric threads interspersed with black & white photos, some taken by the author's sister. A must for the die-hard-dyed-in-the wool Patti fan.
17 of 22 people found the following review helpful
The Wonders Of Woolgathering: Patti's Peak
23 July 2003
Format:Paperback
This little book is the very essence of all that I love most about Patti Smith, and I think, her greatest piece of writing, period. For me she is a bridge between my past(Rock 'N' Roll obsessions)and present(totally Shamanically immersed)with the way that she set out to be a throughy modern Western, Rock 'N' Roll even, Shamanita. At her least sucessful she is a self-obsessed ultra modern poser, set in a pose of the perpetual rocker tough gal outsider...and it feels like such a pose, or show, because of how it contrasts with her when she's not shucking & jiving...you see at her best...she is a free form channeler of the muse of the great mystery itself, and rarely have anyone written as gracefully about such impossible subjects. Her work here is heartbreakingly beautiful and rates with the best of Rumi or e.e. cummings; to name two others who tackled such subjects with both their writings and the living of their very lives as well. I know the price is usually very high on this, & it is a small book...but only in size, & length...it is absolutely enormous in all it aspires to, and priceless in how it ascends towards it's tasks !
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