I am pretty upset with you guys. I feel betrayed. I feel as if I have been purposefully left out.

Why hasn't anyone told me about Patti Smith? 

I started reading Just Kids a few days ago, and I am trying to pace myself so I don't read it too fast. It is beautiful. Patti Smith is a true poet, and she inspires me to do better and to create in a way that only a few musicians and writers have (see: JACK KEROUAC). She is kind and nonjudgmental. I like her for the way she found beauty and art in other people and latched onto those people. I like her for her humility about her talent. If you read her book and never listened to her music or read her poems, you would have no idea about the enormity of her talent. I didn't.

The other day, I put on Horses, and that's when I got really mad. This is maybe one of the greatest albums of all time (according to plenty of lists about such things, anyways), and I couldn't believe that I was hearing it for the first time at 24.5 years old, well over a decade into an intense love for and appreciation of music. You guys suck! I'm not going to do a review here because, well, that's been done. A lot. I will say that Smith's title as the "Godmother of Punk Rock" is apt. In this essay, she referred to Lou Reed as "[their] generation's New York Poet," but that title should not be reserved for Reed alone. Patti Smith is a poet, an angel, a great musician with a killer voice, and she appreciates beauty. That appreciation of beauty is what inspires me the most.

Now, I just got to the part in the book where she buys her first guitar. Don't tell me what happens next.

(Also, cool story about Patti Smith with another of my heroes, Allen Ginsberg).