Patti Smith evokes Allen with love and reverence, recalling two important occasions, in her newly-published memoir, Bread of Angels.
The first, that pivotal occasion when she was called back from her self-imposed exile in Michigan following the deaths, in 1994, of Fred “Sonic” Smith, her husband and Todd Smith, her beloved younger brother:
“William Burroughs called me from his bunker”, she writes, “staying on line for as long as I needed, even though I could hardly speak, conscious that I was comforted that he was on the other end. Allen Ginsberg reached out and advised me to go back to the stage, replace grief with generosity and serve the public. But I hadn’t yet the will to work, drawing instead from the well of others, with nothing to give in return..”
“I was drawn back to public life through poets. Allen Ginsberg visited me in Michigan and encouraged me to take the stage with him to benefit Jewel Heart, a Tibetan Buddhist Foundation. There I met the poet Oliver Ray, a positive source of raw Rimbaudian energy.
I flew back and forth to New York where a community of friends were waiting, and we prepared the album that Fred and I had begun to map out toward the end of his life. Dedicated to Fred, our projected “Going West” would become Gone Again…”
“In September 1995 I was asked to join the International Peace Foundation in Berlin representing the arts. At the press conference I was astonished to find myself seated next to the Dalai Lama and I recited the words to “People Have The Power“. In the next few days I had many opportunities to be near him during greetings and conferences. Sitting across from him eating noodles as a tipsy Robert McNamara mistook him for a Japanese monk I told him my Tibet story and the great remorse my adolescent ambition had produced…”
“When I returned to the city Allen escorted me to a dinner for William at his bunker. Allen was overjoyed that I had met His Holiness and asked me to support the Tibetan people by performing at the annual benefit for Tibet House at Carnegie Hall. He was also determined that I return to the stage and appealed to Bob Dylan to extend his hand. Bob asked me to open up for him on the East Coast swing of his Paradise Lost tour in December. Michael Stipe offered to travel with us by bus up and down the East Coast. Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso often visited us on the road. This small tour, including encouraging words from Bob, boosted by confidence, brought me back to my feet.”
The second, is her witnessing, two years later, at Allen’s death-bed:
“The spring and summer of 1997 saw the passing of both Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs. On the afternoon of April 4th, I brought Jackson and Jesse to Allen’s loft to bid farewell. He lay in his death sleep on a simple white iron bed with an old photograph of Walt Whitman above him. Those who loved him including Robert Frank, Larry Rivers, Anne Waldman and Jonas Mekas entered the small room and stood before him to say goodbye. Gregory Corso sat for hours by his side murmuring “Oh my Allen, oh my Allen”. Monks chanted continuously. His spiritual guide Gelek Rimpoche occasionally looked in on the sleeping poet. He is holding on to life, he smiled, being a bad Buddhist. Oliver Ray and I sat by Allen’s bed with his dear friend Rosebud Pettet. Peter Orlovsky spread white rose petals and prayed as Allen had instructed him. Around 2.30 a.m. Allen suddenly sat up, opened his eyes, looked on us all, then lay back down and breathed his last.
Oliver and I attended his service and then two months later flew to Lawrence, Kansas, to attend Willam’s. The sheriff is dead I said to none in particular. Though his passing broke my heart I did not shed tears. Instead I was consumed by an excitable fury and wrote feverishly as if to bring him back, to materialize the indissoluble filament connecting us all.