PATTI SMITH — SEVENTH HEAVEN

Publisher: Telegraph Books, Boston
Year: 1972
Edition: First Edition — Third Printing
Cover Photograph: Judy Linn
Dimensions: 11.8 × 17.8 cm
Language: English
Format: Softcover
Pages: 47
ISBN: 0-915890-29-1
Condition: Fine — exceptionally well preserved, with no visible imperfections. The only signs of age are a natural fading to the front and back covers.

Seventh Heaven is one of Patti Smith’s earliest books of poetry, published in 1972 by Telegraph Books, the small Boston press whose catalogue also included Gerard Malanga, Ted Berrigan, Ron Padgett, Aram Saroyan, Victor Bockris, and Andrew Wylie.

The book contains 24 poems written in the years before Horses, moving through Smith’s private pantheon of women, artists, and outlaws. Joan of Arc, Renée Falconetti, Edie Sedgwick, Marianne Faithfull, Amelia Earhart, and Marilyn Miller appear alongside poems titled “Cocaine,” “Female,” and “Dog Dream.”

Several of the poems had previously appeared in publications including Creem, Rolling Stone, and Crawdaddy. The poem dedicated to Edie Sedgwick was later used as the soundtrack for a film by Sandy Daley, further connecting Smith’s early writing to the experimental art and film circles surrounding downtown New York.

The acknowledgements include Robert Mapplethorpe and Bobby Neuwirth, placing the publication within the network of artists and musicians that would become central to Smith’s transformation from poet to performer and, eventually, rock artist.

This copy is from the third printing of the first edition, as stated on the copyright page, and stands as an early document of the period immediately preceding Smith’s emergence as one of the defining figures of New York’s downtown cultural underground.