*THIS IS THE LONGEST AND MOST complex of a large group of poetic passages left behind by David Smith, this one probably dating, according to Paul Cummings, from the mid-1950s. Many of these writings consist of listlike catalogues of concrete things that, in Smith’s workbooks, were often accompanied by an appropriate sketch for each item. Then again, such things as Smith itemizes can be found embodied in his sculptures. Smith studied poetry at George Washington University, and his writing of this sort extends the tradition of Whitman’s cataloguing of images. More immediately, the approach compares