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 !
