Poetry Review: The Coral Sea is a collection of Patti Smith's writing about the memory of Robert Mapplethorpe who passed in 1989, at least up to that point in time (1996). I read the revised version published in 2012, which added more poems to the original edition. It consists of a preface to his book Flowers, a poem for his memorial, and a number of prose poems that tell "our story." The collection is well illustrated by both their photographs. As such, it's something of a prequel to her memoir Just Kids (2010), the story of their struggling young "ambitious artists" days in New York City. I'd suggest, however, to read it after if interested. Elegy seems to bring out the creator in Patti Smith. On her groundbreaking, combining punk with poetry, first album Horses (cover photo taken by Mapplethorpe) she included an "Elegie" for Jimi Hendrix. In her three memoirs she recollected Mapplethorpe (Just Kids), her husband Fred "Sonic" Smith (M Train, 2015) and Sam Shepard and Sandy Pearlman (Year of the Monkey, 2019). The Coral Sea is Smith's poetic remembrance, Just Kids is her memoir of the same. The latter is the stronger work, which led me to wonder if memoir is the natural outcome of what Smith calls "the dried-up-poet" syndrome. So much of poetry comes from an author's own life. If as one ages it becomes harder "to make it new," is not memoir, which also flows directly from one's own life not a natural avenue to channel those creative but now maybe less energetic impulses? I know of no poet to compare Smith with, from which she sprang. She is in love with images, she sees all, images and elements appear, vanish, then reappear in another poem, repeating words and images tightly interwoven throughout the book. The poems are visual, but she hears the sounds of her poems, every poem is capable of being read aloud. No, not just read aloud, declaimed, orated, spoken from a stage. Even sung, even danced. The whole is a metaphoric voyage, with people from their lives given new identities. She has a fearless poet's soul, is afraid of no combination of words, willing to write a "reign of tears" or "tiny arrows burning with the seductive poison of love" or "only Cupid in mischievous sleep could muster. And only M in cruel awakening could master." Many poets are far too cool to write those words, but Smith's poetry is fiery, rich, not cool. One line is "No one could enter a soul composed of tears, for one would surely drown." To me those words succeed and fail on several levels. Some favorites are "After Thoughts" and "The Herculean Moth." From these poems I get less a sense of who Robert Mapplethorpe was than who Patti Smith thought he was or what he was to her, for she seems to inhabit his skin in these lines, at times it's unclear where Smith begins or Mapplethorpe ends. She writes of him warts and all, confident that he transcends earthly flaws, traits, and peccadilloes. For her they both needed and collected amulets, tokens, talismans, touchstones, relics and ritual, objects with meaning, myth, and magic. Everything is visceral, tactile, texture. She runs more to emotion, but there is food for the intellect here also. In the final analysis the poems in The Coral Sea are heartfelt, honest in their fanciful way, with a meaning that Smith understands more than anyone. There are many personal and opaque references. For instance in the last line of the book she writes "commending these same wings beneath the folding arms of the deaconess of his soul"; Mapplethorpe died in Deaconess Hospital. For what is infinitely intimate to her, she gently and generously allows us to see through the door she's opened. [3½★]
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