Ist patti smith gay gay
Let's go old school with this review. Oeuvre rule: I first became conscious of Patti Smith 13 years ago, when I took a course called "Writing New York" at NYU. The syllabus was interesting: it primarily consisted of a big anthology of essays and stories about New York written by famous authors over the previous years, starting with Washington Irving's descriptions of the city as it existed in the financial district at its birth. "Bartleby, the Scrivener" by Herman Melville () was also included, and moved me deeply. There was some of the usual stuff by the Beats, and some ultra modern stuff, like the entirety of "Angels in America." There were three even greater curve balls: The Dark Knight Returns, which I skipped at the time and would love 9 years later, The Velvet Underground and Nico, an album I already owned, and Horses by Patti Smith. Our professors told us that Patti Smith was a poet that became a musician. Later when I did mushrooms with a friend that year, he put on Horses and said that everyone had it wrong--psychedelic jam
James Patrick Carraghan
James Patrick Carraghan is an award-winning activist, penner, librarian and scholar at Kutztown University in Pennsylvania. He spends his free time gardening, hording books and flirting. You can obey him on tumblr at
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‘Jesus died for somebody’s sins but not mine.’
So begins Patti Smith’s debut album, Horses. Even though it was not an overnight triumph, the album has gone on to become one of the most iconic rock albums of all time, inspiring more and more imitators with each passing decade. The sound of the album is a combination of classic rock and roll, early punk experiments, and neo-Romantic poetry, seeped in queerness.
The album begins with a reimagining of Van Morrison’s ‘Gloria’ that is so good it is even better than the original. As with many of Smith’s covers, the lyrics have been slightly rewritten and feature Smith’s poetry as a supplement to the first lyrics. Every tune Smith covers becomes her own to a certain extent, existing in a world of co-creation between her and the
Patti Smith Defined Cool in Queer woman Bars of the ’80s
I pinballed between circles of lesbians but settled nowhere. Gorgeous women were everywhere but always out of extend in San Francisco’s mesmerizing haze.
C.J. Janovy
C.J. Janovy is a Kansas City-based journalist and the storyteller of "No Place Like Home: Lessons in Activism from LGBT Kansas," winner of the Stubbendieck Great Plains Distinguished Book Prize and a Lambda Literary Award finalist in LGBTQ nonfiction.
[from "Opinion," A&U: America's AIDS Magazine, March ]
Arrange THE RECORD STRAIGHT
In the Mailbox section of the January '98 A&U, Ira Joel Haber ("Patti Bashing") attempts to demonstrate Patti Smith's homophobia by citing portions of Patricia Morrisroe's biography of Robert Mapplethorpe. It is clear that Haber has very little knowledge of Smith's work and is merely relying on Morrisroe's ideas--interpretations which, instead of revealing Smith's homophobia, actually betray Morrisroe's prurient fixations.
Morrisroe's book focuses heavily on Mapplethorpe's sexual practices. The author appears to be much more interested in unearthing lurid scatological details than exploring Mapplethorpe's work. Morrisroe does not even seem to respect Mapplethorpe as a photographer. By emphasizing and exploiting Mapplethorpe's sexuality, she implies that a queer artist should be studied in terms of his or her erotic activities instead of the works themselves. Such an assumption is homophobic.
In his letter, Haber mentions that, according to Morrisroe, Patti Smith was very upset when she foun