Rain After Midnight

Most of the pieces in Rain After Midnight can be thought of as filmic, as "long story short." The shortness of the form works, like the compression required in a good poem.

There are four distinct groupings or sets of stories: One set has to do with film, cinema, movies; a second springs from thinking about writing, what is involved; pieces connected with England make a third grouping; and the fourth is the past, that great well.

As the French film director Godard said, when a reporter asked him if he thought that a film should have a beginning, middle and end, "Yes. But not necessarily in that order."