From The Smoking Poet Book Review by Zinta Aistars Secret Leopard: New & Selected Poems 1974-2005 by Rosemary Nissen-Wade Softcover 124 pages Publisher: Alyscamps Press, 2005 ISBN: 0-9764509-1-7 The Australian poet Rosemary Nissen-Wade writes in her poem titled, “Crossing the Great Water:” Words are such useless things compared with the touch of a hand, a smiling mouth, a soft eye… Useless things, words. But all we have when we live so distant. All that we have to cross the great spaces of air and ocean lengthening between us. But Nissen-Wade has taken those “useless words” and given them wings to cross the space between the poet and the reader. In an extensive collection of poetry written over a span of more than 30 years, we are witness to the poet’s literary growth. Her topics are large and timeless, yet Nissen-Wade brings them home to the individu