Auguries of Innocence

"I felt the lantern of your arm
the pageantry of your breath
the source of an exquisite wound."

Patti Smith's 2005 book of poems, Auguries of Innocence is a beautiful, incantatory, and elegiac offering. Her voice is powerful and earnest, lamenting and invoking. This small contains exquisite moments and lyrical lines.

Here is an excerpt from the poem "Mummer Love":

"Once I awoke and heard your voice. I caught bits of nature in truth, our whole natural world. I heard the dead. They were calling to me. I felt my powers. Yet I did not go out into the night. I did not go out into the world. I did not use my powers but I wrote what I wrote. My heart cries but my eyes are dry as a salt bed."