Are you a punk rocker? What do you think of punk rockers? Why?

At the age of sixty-one, you are about to be newly lionized in the forthcoming Patti Smith: Dream of Life, a documentary by Steven Sebring that took a decade to complete. The film has some wonderful footage of you and your family, but why are there no interviews with critics or fellow performers or scholars who could provide a context for your work?

I really don’t like that in films, unless someone is dead. I am a living artist. I personally am not interested in people trying to pigeonhole me.

What do you make of being called the “godmother of punk”?

It’s an honorable label; it’s just not the only label that I want. I don’t mind if people say that but I do object when people don’t really understand the full realm of the areas that I work in.

You were writing poems and drawing long before you recorded your debut album, Horses. But don’t you consider your music your most original achievement?

I am not really certain how original my contribution to music is as I am obviously an amateur. I know I’m a strong performer. I’m not an evolved musician. I’m an intuitive musician. I have no real technical skills. I can only play six chords on the guitar.

You seem to cultivate a kind of wild-child mystique, even in your appearance. For instance, why don’t you use hair conditioner?

I do use conditioner!

I’m surprised. You’re the queen of split ends.

That’s very funny because I’ve just cut about eight inches off my hair because it was just too ratty-looking.

Seriously, are you trying to cultivate any sort of image, androgynous or otherwise?

I’m disinterested. I’ve always looked the same. Since I was a child, I hated having to deal with my hair. I hated having to change my clothes. As a kid, I had a sailor shirt and the same old corduroy pants, and that’s what I wanted to wear every day.

One of the more striking aspects of your biography is your long retirement from the music business after marrying the guitarist Fred (Sonic) Smith. You were a stay-at-home mom?

We were a stay-at-home mom-and-dad. We both quit. We lived a very simple life outside of Detroit based on family and study. My husband was a great musician, and taught me a lot about singing, how to sing from deeper within instead of so nasally.

He died suddenly in 1994, when he was only forty-five, and you raised your kids by yourself.

My daughter lives with me in New York. Both she and my son are very gifted musicians and their level of musicianship came from their father. Our closeness magnifies him. We magnify him when we play together.

You seem very sane for a punk rocker.

I had a very good model. My mother had no end of tragedy in her life. She would make herself get up and take a deep breath and go out and do laundry. Hang up sheets. She told me that when she looked at the laundry, the sheets flowing in the wind, and the sun, it was like a fresh start.

What music are you listening to?

I still listen to John Coltrane. I still listen to Jimi Hendrix. I listen to R.E.M. and Radiohead and Silver Mt. Zion, but what I listen to the most is Glenn Gould and opera.

What are you working on these days?

I am writing this memoir about Robert, a diary of our love and friendship. It’s called Just Kids.

You’re referring to the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, another of your muses who died young. Do you ever feel lonely?

Sometimes the pain still—the loss of my brother, the loss of Robert, the loss of my husband, even the loss of my children being children—we can access a lot of things that cause pain. This might seem really funny, but when I feel like that, I make myself smile.

How do you do that?

I just sit and physically make myself smile. Because sometimes it makes you laugh, and then you just go, “All right.”