- The rain screws up its face
- and falls to bits.
- Then it makes itself up again.
- Only the rain can make itself again.
- Adrian Keith Smith
- Age 4
- New Zealand
- Yet there is silence.
- Always silence.
- Like an enormous baby mouth.
- Anne Sexton

- sometimes, like now for instance, I
- feel at a loss for words, perhaps
- that’s why I write more than any other
- reason: I true to find what’s missing.
- I live in Berkeley and spend most of
- my time struggling to become prolific.
- It’s a losing battle but then loss is
- what it’s all about . . . loss of innocence
- as per wm. blake . . . loss of love like
- denise levertov . . . loss of life not
- unlike anne sexton (a sneaky way of)
- naming some of my favorite poets).
- Poetry is a pure form. Pure nonsense
- sometimes, but then I also love ogden
- nash, I live in a house built in 1907
- and I am forever searching for history,
- meaning and stillness in it. I was
- born in 1949 and have not enjoyed
- every minute of it. Or in spite of it.
- I am a very neat and tidy person;
- one might say obsessive, and my
- poetry reflects this. I have, however,
- been known to sweep dust under the rug
- for the sake of expediency. I need to
- decide once & for all on a hair colour
- but I figure, at 31, what’s the rush?
- I love robt bly, yeats, and have learned
- much from e e cummings. I hate ted
- hughes (I blame him, you see), gutter
- 50’s poetics, and ezra pound. I adore vivaldi;
- I loathe lima beans. I agree with archibald
- macLeish who said “A poem should be equal to /
- not true.” I write because I have no choice;
- even when I’m not writing I feel compelled.
- Poetry is distilled emotion, crystallized
- on a page. Poetry is language pared to
- the bone. It is where I go to be alone.