Stone wheel that sharpens the blade that mows the grain,

Wheel of the sunflower turning, wheel that turns

The spiral press that squeezes the oil expressed

From shale or olives. Particles that turn mud

On the potter's wheel that spins to form the vessel

That holds the oil that drips to cool the blade.

-- from "Biography"

Jersey Rain takes up a central American subject: the emotional power of inventions, devices, and homemade imaginings -- from the alphabet and the lyre through the steel drum and piano to the record player, digital computer, and television. Formally innovative and highly readable poems like "ABC", "Ode to Meaning", "To Television", and "The Green Piano" meditate a life guided by the quick, artful tinkerer-god Hermes: deity of music and deception, escort of the dead, inventor of instruments, brilliant messenger, and trickster of heaven.