This volume of poetry, Auguries of Innocence, contains twenty-six poems with a quotation from William Blake, as if it were an introduction. The title of the book is also a quote from Blake.

The volume opens with an introspective poem "The Lovecrafter." I felt most any poet could relate to what is expressed in it. The Long Road spoke to me, but then Smith’s poetry is powerful and it is impossible not to identify with lines like “We broke our mother's heart and became ourselves./ We proceeded to breathe and therefore to leave,/drunken, astonished, each of us a god.

In "The Pythagorean Traveler" can be felt something universally potent that seeps from the divine to the individual. The prose poem "Written by a Lake" is words making music while coming alive. The meaning skips between the tangible and the intangible without losing the wholeness of the piece.

"Birds of Iraq" might have some political needling built into it; even so, it may be preferable to look at it on a wider human scale, at a country torn apart, violence smeared all over with gusto, and the sense of loss permeating beyond the loss of human bodies. Still, the poem is a protest against those who commit human rights violations. And never again/ will vision be so acute/ that dreams could/ produce blood/ a thorny path/ littered with wings.

"Our Jargon Muffles the Drum" is another work of prose, a stream of consciousness piece that leaves the reader breathless through three plus pages; yet, the words carry the sound and meaning with music and a sense of relatedness.

"The Writer's Song" is the last poem in the book. it is better to write/ than die is a reminder that writers are alive and related in living and that life and writing bleed into each other.

feeling the depth of a poet-musician's soul. Patti Smith, the rock star-musician who helped start the punk rock, is more of a poet than a musician. Her poetry is both concrete and abstract, yet powerful, lyrical, and poignant, and she can draw word pictures that come alive.

the insightful, fiery, affecting, and distressing moods the poet so masterfully expresses.

but her other poetry books.

Patti Smith's poetry imposes upon the reader her intimate vision of the world, but then, moving the reader from the depths of sorrow to empathy and insight is what a true poet does.

Interested in buying this? Support Writing.Com by making your purchase of Auguries of Innocence: Poems   from Amazon.Com!

Created Dec 19, 2007 at 7:20pm • Submit your own review...