Rick Smith's two previous books dealt with the diminutive Wren...wren as metaphor, wren as symbol for our own frailties and neuroses. Wren was a delicate bird that must be handled with care. But now, it's a new game and Smith comes out swinging The gloves are off and he takes on the human condition in a "no-holds-barred" re-match that has been years in the making. In "Whispering in a Mad Dog's Ear," Smith shows that he isn't just a one trick pony. He writes about things that are near and dear, about harmonica players and having the blues, about drug addiction, about old lovers and adventures, about psych wards, about madness and redemption, about love and loss; in short, he writes eloquently about the wonders and horrors of life. Take for example, the poem entitled SWANS: Sure, there are swans, silver swans, coupling swans, swans so ominous they remind us of something pre-natal when we were tiny and subject to the counter-clockwise thrill of conception and likewise to the troubling possibilities of gravity. Swans on Silver Lake near where a body was found floating, a hollow swan on our bureau, once filled with cuff links, rings and small change. A pond near the house on the cape where one swan bedazzles herself in early Spring three years running. We watch from distance, counting the times reflection has failed us. There is a haunting beauty here, a suggestibility that doesn't need to go into detail because we already know instinctively what's going on. Such is the poetry of Rick Smith.