Patti Smith, Allen Ginsberg e William Burroughs
Eu sua auto-biografia sobre os seus anos antes do lançamento de seu primeiro (e magnifico e aclamado) disco Hourses, Patti viveu com o grande fotógrafo Robert Mapplethorpe. Esse período de sua vida é cheio de peripécias, descobertas e energia contada de maneira vivida em seu livro "Just Kids", traduzido em português por Só Garotos.
Nessa época ela se encontrou com e conheceu muita gente na efervescência cultura de Nova York no final dos anos 60. Dentre essas figuras que frequentavam o submundo da metrópole americana estava William Burroughs e Allen Ginsberg de que ela se tornou intima amiga. Em Só Garotos, Patti Smith conta como se encontrou com Burroughs:
I’m in Mike Hammer mode, puffing on Kools reading cheap detective novels
sitting in the lobby waiting for William Burroughs. He comes in dressed to the
nines in a dark gabardine overcoat, gray suit, and tie. I sit for a few hours at
my post scribbling poems. He comes stumbling out of the El Quixote a bit
drunk and disheveled. I straighten his tie and hail him a cab. It’s our unspoken
routine.
In between I clock the action. Eyeing the traffic circulating the lobby hung with
bad art. Big invasive stuff unloaded on Stanley Bard in exchange for rent. The
hotel is an energetic, desperate haven for scores of gifted hustling children
from every rung of the ladder. Guitar bums and stoned-out beauties in
Victorian dresses. Junkie poets, playwrights, broke-down filmmakers, and
French actors. Everybody passing through here is somebody, if nobody in the
outside world.
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| Patti Smtih e William Burroughs Depois ela explica o papel que ele Allen e Gregory Corso tiveram em sua vida nessa época: |
Gregory
Corso could enter a room and commit instant mayhem, but he was
easy to
forgive because he had the equal potential to commit great beauty.
Perhaps
Peggy introduced me to Gregory, for the two of them were close. I
took a
great liking to him, to say nothing that I felt he was one of our greatest
poets. My
worn copy of his The Happy Birthday of Death lived on my night
table.
Gregory was the youngest of the beat poets. He had a ravaged
handsomeness
and a John Garfield swagger. He did not always take himself
seriously,
but he was dead serious about his poetry.
Gregory
loved Keats and Shelley and would stagger into the lobby with his
trousers
hanging low, eloquently spewing their verses. When I mourned my
inability
to finish any of my poems, he quoted Mallarmé to me: “Poets don’t
finish
poems, they abandon them,” and then added, “Don’t worry, you’ll do
okay, kid.”
I’d say,
“How do you know?”
And he’d
reply, “Because I know.”
Gregory
took me to the St. Mark’s Poetry Project, which was a poets’
collective
at the historic church on East Tenth Street. When we went to listen to
the poets
read, Gregory would heckle them, punctuating the mundane with
cries of
Shit! Shit! No blood! Get a transfusion!
In watching
his reaction, I made a mental note to make certain I was never
boring if I
read my own poems one day.
Gregory
made lists of books for me to read, told me the best dictionary to
own,
encouraged and challenged me. Gregory Corso, Allen Ginsberg, and
William
Burroughs were all my teachers, each one passing through the lobby
of the
Chelsea Hotel, my new university.
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| Allen Ginsberg, Patti Smith e William Burroughs (continua...) |
