Rocker Patti Smith Headlines at Westport Library

Patti Smith rocked full circle on Thursday evening when she brought a sold-out crowd at a Westport Public Library benefit to its feet, clapping to her music with hands held high.

Punk-music icon, poet, artist and muse and soulmate of the late photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, Smith accepted the library’s 13th annual award in recognition of her contributions “to nurture the love of learning and to enhance our understanding of the world.”

“It’s an alchemical gift!” she exclaimed as she graciously accepted an engraved book made of crystal from library director Maxine Bleiweis. “This book is in stone – it’s a crystal book! Long live the book!”

In gratitude for the recognition – “One does not do one’s work for honors – but I like getting’ ‘em,” she acknowledged – she treated the audience of 400 patrons to an abbreviated rock concert, the first ever in New England’s 5th busiest library.

But this one was different from the electric-guitar-backed, raw, raucous and anarchic performances that earned her the label ‘godmother of punk rock’ at CBGB club in the East Village in the 1970s.

Smith’s piquant, tender memoir of the life she shared with Mapplethorpe, Just Kids, won the 2010 National Book Award and Smith exhibited her best library manners. (The title is taken from a comment of passersby at the sight of Smith and Mapplethorpe, the young Bohemians, on an early pilgrimage to Coney Island.)

At her first-ever library rock concert, Smith was backed by two acoustic guitarists, her longtime friend Lenny Kaye and Michael Campbell, her prospective son-in-law. Smith’s daughter Jesse accompanied on the piano.

And her musical selections were sweet, mellow and from the heart.

“We Shall Live Again” was a homage to Mapplethorpe, the Long Island-born Catholic choirboy who flipped the lid off artistic propriety when the subjects of his photography evolved from flowers – collected as “The Perfect Moment” – to striking images of nude men in sado-masochistic poses.

Smith and Mapplethorpe were lovers who inhabited a singular world of just the two of them when both were refugees to the city from stultifying suburb (in the case of Mapplethorpe) and exurb (Smith, southern New Jersey).

They fed each other’s creative fervor, living first in Clinton Hill in Brooklyn, when Mapplethorpe was an art student at Pratt Institute, and later the storied Chelsea Hotel where the pair became confidantes of the likes of Allen Ginsberg, Janis Joplin, William Burroughs and, at Max’s Kansas City, Warhol and Dylan. Smith went on to a solo career as a singer-songwriter-musician and was inducted into the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame.

As the still-slender Smith, in her trademark black pantsuit, confidently swayed to the music, she wiggled her long tapering fingers to the lyrics “Shake the ghost out!”

Other selections included an ode to William Blake, one of the literary giants whose work Smith first became acquainted with as she was bedridden with scarlet fever in her childhood.

“I’ve always loved books and libraries. They were my salvation. Through the library I got to see the world,” she said as she reminisced about her hometown which was bereft of culture but at least had a library.

“It was my temple, our library,” she said.

Bleiweis recalled Smith’s first visit to the Westport Library to speak 10 years ago, when she drew an overflow crowd to the McManus Room.

“She was beloved and belonged in this library just like she does tonight,” Bleiweis said.

“A book is the most beautiful thing in the world, with tissue guards and beautiful typeface – and illuminating content,” responded Smith, whose memoir recounts how she struggled against starvation and supported Mapplethorpe’s art by selling antiquarian books, some acquired by dubious methods.

“That’s all I got to say,” she concluded – but then she didn’t. The crowd wanted an encore and she wouldn’t disappoint.

First, she explained the difference between the process of writing a poem and writing a song lyric.

“Writing a poem is a very solitary, even narcissistic experience,” she said. “With the lyrics of a song – I’m writing them for you!”

With that she dove into her populist anthem, the rousing “People Have the Power!”

With the crowd pumped, she exhorted them to merge with millions of others around the world to “trample every damn corporation – at least the bad ones.”

“Thank you everybody! I had a great time!” belted out the jubilant Smith, giving her new crystal book a kiss as she disappeared from the library’s makeshift stage.