A Poesia Punk de Patti Smith (encontro com Allen Ginsberg e William Burroughs)

 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.

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.

Allen Ginsberg, Patti Smith e William Burroughs


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