Rivard, David

The unillusioned, effervescent new collection by David Rivard, whose poetry “leaves me with a desire to be permanently friends with this mysterious kind of grace” (Tomaz Salamun)

That the sun stands apart
from all that it abuts,
unwilling to judge it,
may be our only real hope.
—from “We Either Do or Don’t,

But the Problem Evolves Anyway”

In Sugartown, David Rivard’s fourth collection, the poems unwind with the speed of urgent talk, detailing with mischievous humor and fierce candor the catch-as-catch-can experience of American existence. Language and merchandise pass over us in continual feed, and Rivard adeptly, subtly renders this predicament and its costs, while offering in these poems the alternative of paying attention—to one’s self, to others, to the seemingly misbegotten world.

The shards of experiences in Sugartown are glimpsed out of the corner of one’s eye, in a blur of speed. The shapes are often familiar: the happy candy of cell-phone chatter, menus built to comfort the wealthy, emotions turned into intellectual property rights. Underneath this stream of experience, and traveling at exactly the same speed, is the clarity and surprise that our lives—our small triumphs and failures—seem to matter so much more than anyone would have expected.

A kind of "public dreaming" takes place via the music of these poems--a music as likely to visit the long-dead ghosts of the Kwakiutl tribe as Gianni Versace, and as interested in the baby seat of a car as it is in a boxing ring. Building on the critical success of David Rivard's two earlier, award-winning books, Bewitched Playground widens both his emotional aperture and formal range. Rivard calls it "my book of domestic voodoo"--not a book about having a child, but written out of a life touched by a new intimacy, and tuned-in to an unwilled strangeness, a fluctuating gravity.

Here, the unconscious forces of the imagination intersect with the everyday, in a crossroads at the bewitched playground. These stylistically innovative poems are full of the rediscovery that the world teems with "otherness," with freshness and surprise.

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.