poet, musician. books include seventh heaven, witt, and the coral sea. lead singer of the patti smith group. widow of fred smith.

Punk rock's only poet, Patti Smith ranks among the most influential female rock & rollers of all time. Ambitious, unconventional, and challenging, Smith's music was seen as the most exciting fusion of rock and poetry since Bob Dylan. If that hybrid remained distinctly uncommercial for much of her career, it wasn't a statement against accessibility so much as the simple fact that Smith followed her own muse wherever it took her -- from structured rock songs to free-form experimenting, or even completely out of music at times. Her most avant-garde outings drew a sense of improvisation and interplay from free jazz, though they remained firmly rooted in noisy, primitive three-chord rock & roll. She was a powerful concert presence, singing and chanting her lyrics in an untrained but expressive voice, whirling around the stage like an ecstatic shaman delivering incantations. A regular at CBGB's during the early days of NYC Punk, she was the first artist of the bunch to get a record deal and release an album, even beating The Ramones to the punch. The artiness and the amateur musicianship of her work both had a major impact on the Punk Movement, whether in New York or England, whether among her contemporaries (Television, Richard Hell