To a Wreath of Snow: Patti Smith Reads Emily Brontë

In praise of the “voiceless, soulless messenger” that comforts and sustains.

Everything we wish for, everything we plan for, is but a house of cards to be blown into oblivion by the slightest gust of chance. Somehow, we must live with this knowledge, stacking our days one over the other along the edge of life’s inherent uncertainty. In those moments when this elemental precariousness is exposed — by a global pandemic, by a personal loss, by a brush with some narrowly evaded inevitability — we ...