Standoff

by David Rivard

I often feel as though I've entered
a standoff between what
happens around me & what's
going on inside--& this life
that goes on & on inside my head
goes on & on & on it seems
almost without me, as
it has since childhood . . .
--from "Standoff" For three decades, David Rivard has written from deep within the skin of our times. With Standoff , he asks an essential In a world of noise, of global anxiety and media distraction, how can we speak to each other with honesty? These poems scan the shifting horizons of our world, all the while swerving elastically through the multitude of selves that live inside our memories and longings--"all those me's that wish to be set free at dawn." The work of these poems is a counterweight to the work of the world. It wants to deepen the mystery we are to ourselves, stretching toward acceptance and tenderness in ways that are hard-won and true, even if fleeting.

Genres: Poetry

88 pages, Paperback

First published August 2, 2016

About the author

David Rivard is the author of Bewitched Playground, Wise Poison, which won the James Laughlin Award of The Academy of American Poets, and Torque. He teaches at Tufts University and in the M.F.A. Writing Program at Vermont College. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. "

Reviews

[Jimmy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here was my favorite poem in the collection:

Said
BY DAVID RIVARD

I fed my father what
as it turned out the future
would call his last meal
(tho at the time neither
he nor I was required to
think it that exactly)—
ground chourico & chopped
green pepper open-faced
on a burger bun, french fries,
a cupcake with icing almost
chocolate in flavor—alarming,
a departure from his diet
of low-sodium, zeroed-out
trans fats & sugar-free
vegetables with high fiber-
scores, suffering as he had
been for years from barbarian
cholesterol & geriatric
diabetes (the nurse shrugged
simply & said "why not?"—
meaning of course that
we should get it, all of us,
he was going to die,
and soon). A few loose
chitters of ground sausage
fell onto his johnnie
from the fork I lifted
to his mouth—they left
tiny, paprika-red dots
of oil on the sheer cotton,
prussic red, corpuscle red
like the small scabs my sister
and I had left on his face
while helping him shave
the day before. A week earlier
I had visited him at home;
the day an unusually warm
day in a March unusually
cold. He was telling me how
he'd gone out into the yard
to get some sun only to return
minutes later to the house,
the wind far too strong—
he said he worried that
if the wind took his hat
from his head, he might
die while chasing it.
I made a joke—forced to,
I thought—chasing a hat,
I said, that might be
a better death than most,
I said maybe the death
certificate would read "killed
by the wind." He laughed
all right. You know, he said,
you've really got a lousy
sense of humor. Better than
nothing, I guess—(did he
say that, or did I think
it?). Later he said . . . he'd said
earlier . . . then I said . . . he
said . . . I said . . . I said . . .
I said . . . Say now that
this might be all that's left
for consolation, this
might be love at the end,
the confidences exchanged—
all these pratfalls, & this
skin chapped by a blade,
and your willing servant's
shaky hands, then a short
trip to be washed a last,
finally blameless time
(so the scriptures say)
in the blood of the lamb:
a smell like the smell of
sweetgrass burning crosswise
the length of a dry plain
and sent by a wind whose
swiftness has in it the bright
voices of kindergarteners, children
born of a hardship town.

David Rivard, "Said" from Standoff. Copyright © 2016 by David Rivard.

[Sari · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Standoff" is the first book of poetry by David Rivard that I have read. It is a volume that has grown on me as I have read the poems. Some are quite cohesive, a few feel like they go off track. I encourage readers to take the time to savor these poems and decide for themselves.

I want to thank the publisher and Goodreads First Reads for an ARC of this book.

[M · Rating 3 out of 5]

Easily my favorite in the collection:



Salaryman

In the plume of smoke rising
from a volcano on the coast of Iceland,
papery sheets of ash--each ripped square
like a note safety-pinned
to a child's woolen coat
but torn off by a roadside wind--

a missing explanation--

"Please help this boy," the note reads,
"he is a good boy. Give him only
what is needed. He will be
neither genius nor dolt. He likes thinking
(as if thinking were the same
as swimming). When he hears
the hum of bees in the honey locust
teach him that a barge song
is what the bees sing. Remind him
that the lake is there for him to swim--
he doesn't always need to think. This
is a world where a shy salaryman
with a handful of supermarket roses
wrapped in cellophane has to walk
under a sky full of falling rain--
tell this boy the threadbare & blushing
could use a spokesman too."



(pg 32)

[Norb Aikin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not an expert at critiquing poetry, but there was nothing much that was moving or exceptional here. Occasional bursts of clever wordplay an imagery, but that's it. Mostly, this collection is filled with basic observations basically observed.

Standout poems: "Scooter", "Workrules", "Lucky Day Still", and "This".

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like these poems even if David Rivard insists upon spelling though as tho.

"Sometimes when the house I live in
is ballsy with sunlight my readiness for life can seem
either very large or very small now."

[Hillary · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought it was very good for what it wasi prefer novels, I am not a huge fan of poetry that being said it was still a very nice read.