David Rivard writes the story of reality construction in his poems. What it means to be afraid, or defiant, or amazed lies in some combination of happenstance and the story we tell ourselves about who we are, he seems to be saying. Consider, as a case in point, "Any Where Out of the World," in which Rivard describes sweating through a shirt so that the red dye stains his skin at the very moment he first learns of the Jonestown massacre. He writes: "I found my chest & arms tinted / a translucently purplish red / paper towels and liquid soap couldn't scrub off-- / so that the words ... seemed then to have made my body / glow ..." The circumstance of hearing the news at that time alters the experience's meaning. For Rivard, the disaster, born of madness and faith, becomes the story of all human loss and suffering.
From Publishers Weekly
In his first collection, Torque, David Rivard proved that he had a storyteller's ear and an eye for gritty detail. In Wise Poison, winner of the 1996 James Laughlin Award of the Academy of American Poets, Rivard relies less on setting or personae, more on his own delicate wit and sheer poetic nerve (in consecutive poems, he steals titles from Baudelaire and the country-western great Merle Travis). The gamble pays off. With this collection, Rivard has come into a truly American voice, at once eccentric and universal.Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Book Description
In Wise Poison David Rivard gives us a mind hard at work on the most vital questions: Who am I? What do I love? What can be trusted? At issue in these passionate arguments with the self are the "curious forces" that surround us in every part of our lives. In an airport lounge in the Yucatán, in the song of a street musician, or simply in the pulsing of skin along the neck, Rivard finds connections and doubt, and reason for both comfort and rage.
From the Back Cover
"I love these intense, brilliantly crafted poems. Wise Poison is perfectly pitched and uniquely American, a beautiful, angry, heartbreaking, celebratory, and powerful book."--Thomas Lux
In Wise Poison David Rivard gives us a mind hard at work on the most vital questions: Who am I? What do I love? What can be trusted? At issue in these passionate arguments with the self are the "curious forces" that surround us in every part of our lives. In an airport lounge in the Yucatán, in the song of a street musician, or simply in the pulsing of skin along the neck, Rivard finds connections and doubt, and reason for both comfort and rage.
"The poems in David Rivard's compelling and delicious new book do not smother you with grandiosity nor come creeping towards you bowed down in self-effacement. These are poems of a human scale; they are complicated, muscled with irony, and their wonderful voice is startling in its power to move, interest, delight."--Lynn Emanuel
David Rivard's first book, Torque, won the Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize, and was published in the Pitt Poetry Series. Wise Poison is the recipient of the 1996 James Laughlin Award of The Academy of American Poets. He teaches at Tufts University and in the M.F.A. Writing Progarm at Vermont College.
About the Author
David Rivard's previous book, Torque, won the Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize. Among his many awards are fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council; a Pushcard Prize, and the Celia B. Wagner award from the Poetry Society of America. He teaches at Tufts University and in the M.F.A. in Writing Program at Vermont College.
Wise Poison: Poems FROM THE PUBLISHER
In Wise Poison David Rivard gives us a mind hard at work on the most vital questions: Who am I? What do I love? What can be trusted? At issue in these passionate arguments with the self are the "curious forces" that surround us in every part of our lives. In an airport lounge in the Yucatán, in the song of a street musician, or simply in the pulsing of skin along the neck, Rivard finds connections and doubt, and reason for both comfort and rage.
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
In his first collection, Torque, David Rivard proved that he had a storyteller's ear and an eye for gritty detail. In Wise Poison, winner of the 1996 James Laughlin Award of the Academy of American Poets, Rivard relies less on setting or personae, more on his own delicate wit and sheer poetic nerve (in consecutive poems, he steals titles from Baudelaire and the country-western great Merle Travis). The gamble pays off. With this collection, Rivard has come into a truly American voice, at once eccentric and universal.
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