What I recognize in Rick Smith's poetry, (Whispering in a Mad Dog's Ear, Lummox Press, 2014) is that he is first and foremost a musician, a brilliant harmonic player, who has put his soulful, wailing rhythm-phrases into words. Smith has seen every side of life and his blues-turned-poem lifts us to other worlds and then again sends us plunging into the most sordid depths of this one.
        Even in dream,
        there is a howling
        upon us
        in ever sharpening
        Doppler pitch
        - "On the Lam"

Smith's "words stagger out", as he says in the first poem in the book, and yet the power of his rhythmic gift is like a train at full speed. He sees people and things in sharp relief and his short and pungent stanzas wake us as the caller of an Indian ceremony or the ritual chanter who has visited many states and lands, bringing us his experience.
        I sense the history of painting:
        This is a blue room
        and a girl sits at a /eflow table
        it seems to be on fks
        leaning over into red
        primary colors
        - "The Future"

This poem carries us through some of the poet's life and in the journey we experience him climbing a ladder from a 1953 Buick, though the Holland Tunnel and out beyond where living in the future is eating cherry pie, not before a wish to revenge his enemies. Smith travels and as he travels, (PA, LA, Wisconsin, Hyannis, the Southwest among other places,) he brings us with him and in and out of his demons, through the nightmares of cocaine and recovery through the slums of LA, with many poems dedicated to and inspired by a variety of people, such as Allen Ginsberg, Uncle Jules Lathrup, k jett, Frank O'Hara, The Parker Bros.; he shows us his connections and his loves. This poet-mind is fully lit and we careen with him, up and down emotional tones as he dares us to live life to the fullest, as he has.

To excerpt lines does the poems disservice, as each stanza, though fully packed with meaning and imagery, leads to the next and makes the integral whole.
        the child's sucker
        is a moon on a stick
        a broken globe
        flung into a southerly
        orbit
        a pretense of rain
        the dice tumbling
        across the board
        in their time
        a silver gun ship
        that won't float
        a silver dog
        the bark in progress
        a top hat
        a boot a
        steam iron
        you know the rest
        - "pebble game"

But we don't know the rest. We need Rick Smith to tell us, to wail it to us, harp on mouth, joy, even in the darkest despair coming from those lips. This wonderful book of poetry and personal history is yours to discover.