• M Train

  • A Memoir
  • By: Patti Smith
  • Narrated by: Patti Smith
  • Length: 6 hrs and 32 mins
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars (1,171 ratings)

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M Train  By  cover art

M Train

By: Patti Smith
Narrated by: Patti Smith
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Publisher's summary

From the National Book Award-winning author of Just Kids: an unforgettable odyssey of a legendary artist told through the prism of the cafés and haunts she has worked in around the world. It is a book Patti Smith has described as "a road map to my life".

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, which 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, 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 multiplatform artists at work today.

©2015 Patti Smith (P)2015 Random House Audio

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What listeners say about M Train

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Exquisite

One of the best dreampoems you'll ever hear. Beautifully written, beautifully performed. Repeatable. Even better than Just Kids, although I'm sure they aren't in competition.

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15 people found this helpful

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what a lovely experience

I will read this book again when I want to feel love and inspiration from a voice who fills my head and heart.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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Powerful presence

A powerful meditation on loss, time, books, and love filled with poetic ruminations... Diaristic everyday details ground the book, and give it a kind of presence. Listening to Patti Smith's voice reading M Train on my iPhone while I walked to and from work each day was an amazing sensation, like having a friend walking along with me and learning so much along the way.

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    3 out of 5 stars
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Fully smitten

Felt like meeting an old friend, left me wanting more. Excited to explore her other works.

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  • HB
  • 07-04-16

Fantastic book and great reading...

I read the book first and then found the audio read by Patti herself. It was awesome.

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  • SG
  • 08-31-16

Wordsmith smooth

Patti Smith is a master wordsmith.
The definition of "poet"
This work lives...invites you for a walk through the artists head.

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Beautiful love poem

No one but Patti Smith could narrate or write such a beautiful poem about lost things,lost love and Fred Sonic Smith. Listen in those quiet moments when the world seems overwhelming in its randomness.

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    4 out of 5 stars
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A Haunting Lyrical Journey of the Heart

Like Alice stepping through the looking glass, this book provided a portal into the unique inner life and multi-dimentional reflections of an artist at a pivotal transition in her life's third quarter.

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Amazing

M train is Perfectly dreamy, sad and inspirational. I could listen to her voice tell stories forever.

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    4 out of 5 stars

A dreamscape about a writers inspiration

This is a nonlinear book told in a detailed yet dreamlike voice that touches on many subjects. With a poetic voice and a fluid narrative that blurs reality and fiction, she ponders the craft of writing with insight and despondance while drinking coffee in a cage and watching the world go around. It is also a paean th past masters and the devotion they inspire. Along the way the reader is treated to a travelogue, a memoir, a coffee addiction and other ruminations of an artist as a person and the person as an artist. And it all works.

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