Description: 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.
Brief description: Patricia Cleary Miller is professor emerita of English at Rockhurst University, where she founded and edited the Rockhurst Review. She is the author of Starting a Swan Dive (Daniel L. Brenner Award) from BkMk Press, as well as the poetry titles Dresden and Crimson Lights, and the nonfiction title Westport: Missouri's Port of Many Returns. Her work has appeared in Stand, Connecticut Review, New Letters, Cottonwood, I-70 Review, and elsewhere. Her secondary school was the French Convent of Notre Dame de Sion. She is a graduate of Radcliffe College (where she also held a Bunting fellowship), the University of Missouri-Kansas City, and the University of Kansas. For eight years she was poet laureate of the Harvard Alumni Association. She is a past president of the Writers Place and won its annual Muse Award.
Review Quotes: "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."
--Mia Leonin