Can You Smell the Rain?

Can You Smell the Rain?, Patricia Cleary Miller's new collection of poetry,

poses the old theatrical question, Who wants what, and why can't

they have it? Her confused and deluded characters take themselves

seriously as they yearn for love. With wit and gently biting satire,

the poet presents their struggles. Beware: a snicker at these characters

is a snicker at yourself.

As poet H. L. Hix writes in his foreword to the collection, "William Carlos Williams was onto something with his aphorism, "No ideas but in things," but Patricia Cleary Miller's Can You Smell the Rain? goes Williams one better. Miller doesn't have to say what her poems prove: No moments but in things, no memories, no lives, no loves. These are poems (or, I would say, this is a lyric memoir) lush with vivid and vivifying particular." Poet Mia Leonin, in her advance praise for the book, writes, "Miller's rapturous attention to detail and her deft sense of story conjure a poetic genealogy, swirling and swooning with ancestors, lovers, and earthly delights."