One New York Poet Honors the New York Poems of Another

“You’re being very good,” Patti Smith told a sold-out audience at the Bowery Ballroom on Wednesday night. “I’m very proud of you.”

The source of her pride was the crowd’s quiet and attention while Smith and others read the poems of Federico García Lorca. The reading and concert was part of a months-long celebration of the Spanish poet, and more specifically of the brief time he spent in New York in 1929 and 1930, which inspired his collection “Poet in New York.”

Ms. Smith unassumingly wandered on to the stage 10 minutes before the event’s listed start time of 9 p.m. She spoke about Lorca’s work, calling “A Poet in New York,” “a very American book” that offers “special insight into New York City.”

Several friends of Ms. Smith, including the writer John Giorno and her longtime musical collaborator Lenny Kaye, then read words by Lorca. The standing spectators expressed their appreciation, but after nearly an hour there was a growing sense that the evening would have to start rocking at some point.

When Ms. Smith announced that there would be a brief intermission before she and her band launched into the fully musical portion of the night, someone in the crowd shouted a request. Ms. Smith responded with a laugh: “Oh yeah, like I’ve got nothing better to do than a 14-minute improvisation.”

Ms. Smith regularly invoked the spirit and work of Lorca, but during a set that included old favorites like “Ask the Angels” and new songs like “This Is the Girl” (written in memory of Amy Winehouse), she was clearly the center of attention: spitting water across the stage, explaining that her shirt was really a pajama top from Bergdorf Goodman and making jokes about how New Yorkers could look forward to seeing her on the streets more often when she’s back from a summer tour overseas. (“I’ll be like a wandering homeless person with at least two homes,” she said.) In a rousing encore, she made the connection between her own work and the honored poet’s more explicit by performing “Piss Factory,” her 1974 spoken-word plaint about a menial job. “I got something to hide here called desire,” Ms. Smith recited. “And I will get out of here.”