Standoff: Poems

by David Rivard

Overview

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 question: 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781555977450
Publisher:	Graywolf Press
Publication date:	08/02/2016
Pages:	88
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.80(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

David Rivard is the author of five previous collections, including Otherwise Elsewhere and Wise Poison, winner of the James Laughlin Award. He teaches at the University of New Hampshire and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Table of Contents

Greenwood Nightfall 3

Less Than, More Than 4

Said 6

Birth Chart 9

Swerver 11

Rye Whiskey, Rye Whiskey 13

Play Safe 15

Take It on the Heel 17

Don't 18

Stowaways 19

Iron Rising Out of Iron 20

Brush Your Fingers through Your Hair, Why Don't You 21

Arriving from a Destination 23

Scooter 25

What's It to You? 27

Workrules 28

Blood Like Milk 30

Kid Charlemagne 31

Salaryman 32

I Can't Speak So 33

Standoff 37

Flickering 43

Chosen 45

Bookish 46

That Year 48

Late January Protest against the Betrayers 50

Common 51

News Cycle 52

Second Chances 53

Lucky Day Still 55

Escapism 56

This 58

What She Said 59

Call & Response 60

Take It on the Heel 62

To Rotate 63

Tomas 65

Excellence 66

Olive Trees 68

Michael Mazur 69

Freedom in the Midst 71

Ghosts on the Road 72

Darkhorse 74

The Moon in Time Lapse 76

Here We Go 77

Editorial Reviews

07/18/2016
Rivard (Otherwise Elsewhere) stands “inside the murderous/ machinery” to take up a better perspective on the noise of the modern world. He incorporates a wide swath of references, images, and source materials, reflecting the haphazard nature of postmodern mass culture. Moreover, Rivard possesses a charmingly clever and idiosyncratic facility with his metaphors and turns of phrase, as in “the nutshell/ space of the mind” or “the vexed/ but coppery-bright buzz that likewise/ comes if you cup a loud cricket in your hand.” But for all the delightful wordplay, too often it’s difficult to discern any direction; the language seems to add to the din rather than distilling a focused critique of it. Elsewhere, Rivard presents unvarnished moments for deep contemplation, but has a habit of undermining himself by striving too hard for profundity. In “Call and Response,” he notes a previous reader’s marginalia on a Zbigniew Herbert poem, pondering the emotions of the note-taker. But in commenting on the distance between the dead Herbert and the “troubled, nameless” reader, Rivard ends up leading the horse to water and expecting it to drink. Perhaps Rivard should have better trusted his own advice that “some of what happens/ by accident occasionally/ (or more than occasionally)/ ought to be thought/ a gift.” (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

[Standoff] presents a range of memories and circumstances where the poet stares down mortality and emerges from the skirmishes with his compassion and perceptiveness intact. . . . The poems don’t present easy answers; instead they offer an astute guide through everyday experiences.”—The Washington Post

“Each poem is alive, nurturing, and rich. . . . Rivard is diverse and eclectic and pretty much master of the surprise. . . . He still manages to come to us with new emotions every time; and a sense of beauty that is forthright and structurally sound.”—Washington Independent Review of Books

“Well-crafted, cleanly ringing. . . . Wise, graceful poems for all readers.”—Library Journal *Starred Review*

“Rivard possesses a charmingly clever and idiosyncratic facility with his metaphors and turns of phrase.”—Publishers Weekly

“Standoff is a demanding work by a mature poet that goes to a place many of us face, but about which few of us speak with humility and candor. In giving us Standoff, Rivard opens for us the possibility of drawing to something more.”—Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene

“In his superb new collection of poems, Standoff, David Rivard persuades us to recognize those human touchstones that arise as we navigate the wreckage of our present moment. Once again, Rivard proves himself a master of an understated yet powerful and compelling moral compass, just as he is also an acute observer of those disquieting daily nuances seeping into our lives. The ghosts of beloved friends, poets, and family haunt many of these poems, as Rivard considers the constant gravitational pull of mortality, only to posit that experience itself offers us the power to call it, at least for now, a clear—and a hard-won—standoff.”—David St. John

From the Publisher

★ 06/15/2016
James Laughlin Award winner Rivard (Wise Poison) here finds himself in midstream, mediating on "What's left?" The feel is not, however, of resignedly looking backward but of thoughtful recalibration. The collection opens, "I miss myself most/ these days with friends" and ends "here we go again, full speed ahead." In between, in well-crafted, cleanly ringing poems, the poet reflects on his father's dying, recalls beloved authors, reveals the smarts not to discourage a friend's enthusiasm, declares "that a little foolishness/ goes a long, long way, I'd say;/ a lot drops dead/ in its tracks," and, in the title poem, headily embraces what's "baffling, vast, elemental,/ hopeful, & threatening/ as that—but different." VERDICT So what's left? Wise, graceful poems for all readers.

Library Journal