Notes

253 pages : illustrations, portraits 21 cm Stations -- Cafē Ino -- Changing channels -- Animal crackers -- The flea draws blood -- Hill of beans -- The well -- Wheel of fortune -- How I lost the wind-up bird -- Her name was Sandy -- Vecchia zimarra -- Mu -- Tempest air demons -- A dream of Alfred Wegener -- Road to Larache -- Covered ground -- How Linden kills the thing she loves -- Valley of the lost -- The hour of noon M Train begins in the tiny Greenwich Village cafe where Smith goes every morning for black coffee, ruminates on the world as it is and the world as it was, and writes in her notebook. Through prose that shifts fluidly between dreams and reality, past and present, and across a landscape of creative aspirations and inspirations, we travel to Frida Kahlo's Casa Azul in Mexico; to a meeting of an Arctic explorer's society in Berlin; to a ramshackle seaside bungalow in New York's Far Rockaway that Smith acquires just before Hurricane Sandy hits; and to the graves of Genet, Plath, Rimbaud and Mishima. Woven throughout are reflections on the writer's craft and on artistic creation. Here, too, are singular memories of Smith's life in Michigan and the irremediable loss of her husband, Fred Sonic Smith. Braiding despair with hope and consolation, illustrated with her signature Polaroids, M Train is a meditation on travel, detective shows, literature and coffee. It is a powerful, deeply moving book by one of the most remarkable artists at work today Every morning, Patti Smith walks to her local coffee shop on Bedford Street in New York's Greenwich Village and orders the same thing: brown toast with olive oil and a large cup of black coffee. Struggling to write a poem in homage to the author Roberto Bola