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."