What It Means to Be an Artist

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Dec 19, 2025

"Then it struck me: Everything was a potential poem. The stoic prayers of the mantis, the knowing eyes of my dog…"

— Patti Smith

What It Means to Be an Artist

Maria Popova ever so artfully provides a glimpse into Patti Smith’s memoire, Bread of Angels. A host of health, cultural, family, friends, and spiritual conditions and losses are overwhelming. Still, Patti had the “the heart to pierce other dimensions, the eyes to observe without judgment.” This may have been because she was able to say “no” – no to so many things like “no to every Faustian bargain of so-called success offering prestige at the price of authenticity, no to the gender norms of dress and demeanor, no to the photographers insisting on airbrushing her peculiarities…” She remained “ever ‘enthralled by small things’ — the wild roses climbing up the ramshackle house, the ‘impossible blue’ of the morning glories…giving form to those ‘unpremeditated gestures of kindness’ that are the bread of angels.”

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