I’m happy when I’ve got a little project. I like making things.

I’ve always been a watcher, and I think about what I’ve seen. Sometimes this results in an object. Sometimes I try to get at it with words.  When I’m lucky, something will take my thinking—take me—to a new place and I get to see what’s in the weeds.

At times, there’s no thinking, there’s just looking, and lauding, and that becomes the project.

Recently, I’ve been collaborating with the  composer and jazz musician, Paul Finley, to create duets using prose and piano: words and music in conversation, another way to get at it and another happy project.

Recent Works

Music Lessons after he’s gone

MUSIC LESSONS after he’s gone “She knows by now that grief is mostly endurance, understanding over and over that the person you loved is not coming back.”  The News From Spain: Seven Variations on a Love Story, by Joan Wickersham ~ I…

83 PROBLEMS A-Z

83 PROBLEMS, A-Z I am not—I think I am not—afraid of dying. ~William Maxwell, Nearing 90 .     .     . Missing cat, panic, braindead, fruitflies, envy.  Problems. As a psychotherapist, I worked for years to help people…

A Duet for Prose and Piano
Paul Finley & Patricia Smith
Photo Courtesy Paul Joseph Brown

Words by Patricia Smith
Original music by Paul Finley

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