Sadly, I wasn’t at the Patti Smith reading curated by the Community Bookstore at Brooklyn Bridge Park (as part of the Books Beneath the Bridge series curated by Brooklyn’s independent bookstore). I was on Block Island that August day so I missed it.

Today, I received a sweet reminisence of that event in the Bookstore’s montly e-newsletter, which I’d love to share with you. It was written by Ezra Goldstein, co-owner of Park Slope’s landmark bookshop and it provides a flavor of that event which was attended by 500 people. Here it is:

“When Patti Smith started cracking jokes at Brooklyn Bridge Park; when she paused in reading from her poetry and prose to turn and wave at a passing tugboat and 500 people waved with her; when she read or chanted or sang lines that reminded us of times and people long gone but also of feelings that never go away; when she mimicked Vanilla Fudge on acid, we began to breathe again, figuring things were going to be okay. Better than okay, because that August evening felt a whole lot like what Patti writes inWoolgathering:

“And a sum of us
will flicker
just a bit of dust, hardly noticed
but it fills the air with substance.
The immortal dream…”