Poetry
Robert Lavett Smith

Photo Credit: Yuri Numerov

This is the sort of thing, I imagine,
that someone like Billy Collins
could write an enormously popular
poem about—a non-event fraught
with symbolic potential. Let us
therefore consider the Moleskine,
legendary cahier of Hemingway,
Picasso, and Chatwin (proclaims
the accompanying historical
leaflet), all of whom undoubtedly
did something more significant
with it than whatever I am about
to do. I must not allow myself
to be in any way intimidated.
But there is still the prospect
of staring down that first blank page.

Raised in New Jersey, Robert Lavett Smith has lived since 1987 in San Francisco, where for the past fifteen years he has worked as a Special Education Paraprofessional. He has studied with Charles Simic and Galway Kinnell. He is the author of several chapbooks and two full-length poetry collections, the most recent of which is Smoke In Cold Weather: A Gathering of Sonnets (Full Court Press, 2013). Email: rmusicbob[at]aol.com