Morgan's TOP 5 in 2025 | M Train - Patti Smith

Morgan says... How to put into words the beautiful nature of this book. Smith's writing is mesmerising as she muses her way through dreams both realised and imagined. With its poetic flairs and her inspiring thought processes, M Train is a memoir unlike any other. In moments connected by frequented cafe's and dreams, Smith draws you into a world composed of memory and imagination. This book is as comforting as it is mystical, and for me a newly discovered treasure. 

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M Train begins in the tiny Greenwich Village café where Smith goes every morning for black coffee, ruminates on the world as it is and the world as it was, and writes in her notebook. Through prose that shifts fluidly between dreams and reality, past and present, and across a landscape of creative aspirations and inspirations, we travel to Frida Kahlo’s Casa Azul in Mexico; to a meeting of an Arctic explorer’s society in Berlin; to a ramshackle seaside bungalow in New York’s Far Rockaway that Smith acquires just before Hurricane Sandy hits; and to the graves of Genet, Plath, Rimbaud and Mishima. Woven throughout are reflections on the writer’s craft and on artistic creation.

Here, too, are singular memories of Smith’s life in Michigan and the irremediable loss of her husband, Fred Sonic Smith. Braiding despair with hope and consolation, illustrated with her signature Polaroids, M Train is a meditation on travel, detective shows, literature and coffee. It is a powerful, deeply moving book by one of the most remarkable artists at work today.