This accusatory line is tossed at Patti as she visits Jim Morrison’s grave in Paris, uttered by a Parisian woman troubled by the tributes American tourists had left at the gravesite, tributes she saw as desecrations. As we’re about to honor Patti with a medal at a posh ceremony one week from tonight, now seems to be a good time to ponder the best way to honor our poets, poets like Patti. Thankfully, I think these pages provide us with some powerful clues.

The need to honor the poets that have inspired her is pervasive throughout Patti’s life and work, but especially evident in this section of the book. The episode at Jim Morrison’s grave comes at the end of a trip to France that was meant to provide research and inspiration for a book Patti intended to write about Arthur Rimbaud. Yet the words didn’t seem to come to her on this journey, leaving her frustrated and sad. Perhaps the poets are not best honored through such enshrinement.

Not to be deterred, Patti continues to seek connections with those who came before her.  She writes her own poetry while listening to The Pipes of Pan at Joujouka, solely because it was produced by Brian Jones and was itself the music that he had found so inspirational for his own creativity. While her first single is remembered mostly for her original song “Piss Factory,” Patti reminds us here that it was actually the b-side, the a-side being a cover of Jimi Hendrix’s “Hey Joe,” deliberately recorded to honor Hendrix, with “Piss Factory” added as an afterthought.

Alongside Patti, a number of other folks in this burgeoning scene are also seeking to honor the poets that inspired them, including some with uncanny connections to Patti’s same inspirations. She talks of seeing an early version of Television perform at CBGB’s, feeling a special connection with guitarist and vocalist Tom Verlaine.  Not only had he borrowed his last name from the same Paul Verlaine that Patti admired, the Verlaine who had such a tumultuous relationship with Arthur Rimbaud, but he had also grown up within 20 minutes of Patti, sharing similar geography as well as choice in idolized poets.

For the first time, Patti experiments with marijuana in an attempt to connect with Jamaica’s finest reggae poets, inspired by a viewing of the film The Harder They Come. Certainly unknown to Patti at the time, a group of London kids who would later form the Sex Pistols, the Clash, the Slits, and the other foundational UK punk rock acts draw inspiration from this same film and these same reggae poets.

Lenny Kaye, Patti’s emerging musical collaborator during this period, had spent some of his time prior to meeting Patti assembling the influential garage rock compilation Nuggets, writing loving liner notes that were his own way of honoring his poets, notes that would contain one of the first usages of the phrase “punk rock.”

Ultimately, it’s the combination of Lenny’s love of garage rock with Patti’s love of poetry that seems to provide the key to the best way of honoring those who came before them. While improvising, Patti reads from her poem “Oath,” the same poem that she and Kaye had performed at their first reading together, beginning this time with her most famous lyric, “Jesus died for somebody’s sins, but not mine.”  Lenny begins to play the chords to one of his favorite garage rock classics, The Angry Young Them’s “Gloria,” one of the first songs to feature Van Morrison on vocals. This poetry, combined with this music, embodies the way forward: The best way to honor the poets is perhaps to desecrate them. Patti says that Jesus Christ was “a man worthy to be rebelling against, because he was rebellion itself.” She says this famous line was meant as a “declaration of existence,” and a “vow to take responsibility for [her] own actions.” The Angry Young Them’s song is best honored not by being played as a straight cover, but by being converted to the Angry Young Patti and Lenny’s song. The poets are best honored not by being enshrined in museums and treated gingerly and respectfully, but by making original poetry that is not afraid to boldly move beyond them. It’s no surprise that everyone tends to forget “Hey Joe” but remembers “Piss Factory.”

This transition is solidified as Patti’s band performs at a club when Bob Dylan walks in. Rather than feeling the need to stop playing or be nervous before the man she aspired to emulate, Patti instead describes the moment as feeling his power evidenced in her own worth and the worth of her band and what they were doing on stage. She may have aspired to emulate the poets she admired, but she did so ultimately not by cautious or timid imitation but rather by bold innovation.

And now it’s her turn to be honored. Though, to be fair, she and her fellow travelers have already been honored for quite some time. While reading this section of the book, I was listening to the Minutemen’s Double Nickels on the Dime album, a totem from some of the poets I most revere myself. One of the songs on this album, “History Lesson – Part II,” contains some striking lyrical references to many of the folks described in these pages. “Mr. Narrator,” singer D. Boon says, “This is Bob Dylan to me. My story could be his songs. I’m his soldier child.” D. Boon goes on to list some of the folks he aspired to be in his own performances, beginning with Blue Oyster Cult’s E. Bloom (in fact, D. Boon’s stage name was deliberately chosen to resemble E. Bloom’s), the same Blue Oyster Cult that nurtured Patti’s early songwriting.  He then immediately name-checks Richard Hell, the very Richard Hell that collaborated with Tom Verlaine in the early days of Television at CBGB’s, alongside the early iteration of Patti Smith’s band.  Joe Strummer and John Doe round out his list.

But it was another lyric from this song that had a more enduring legacy: “Our band could be your life.” This line would eventually be the title to Michael Azerrad’s excellent history of American indie rock in the 1980’s, a testament to the many fans who eventually turned into artists themselves. The message and legacy of the Minutemen was the same as the lesson that Patti, et. al., had learned a few years earlier: We best honor our poets by desecrating them and creating original poetry in their place.

Just a couple of years ago, I saw the Minutemen’s bassist Mike Watt end a show with a glorious cover of Television’s first single “Little Johnny Jewel,” followed by his shouting exhortation to the fans from the stage: “Write your own songs.  Form your own band.”

And so the cycle continues. As we prepare to honor Patti Smith with the medal ceremony next week, let us remember these lessons. Our poets are not honored by being enshrined in museums or praised from podiums. They are honored by what we choose to do ourselves in their wake. The only way we can honor their legacy is to leave a legacy of our own.