Wise Poison: Poems

Rivard, David

ISBN 10: 1555972519 / ISBN 13: 9781555972516

Published by Graywolf Press, Saint Paul, MN, 1996

About this Item

Saint Paul, MN: Graywolf Press, 1996. First edition. 8vo. Black-matte paper-covered boards with gilt lettering on spine, 69 pp. The poems in David Rivard's compelling and delicious new book do not smother you with grandiosity nor come creeping 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 and delight. New in a new dust jacket; protected by a mylar cover.

Seller Inventory # EM-B1178-04

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Wise Poison: Poems
• Publisher: Graywolf Press, Saint Paul, MN
• Publication Date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1555972519
• ISBN 13: 9781555972516
• Binding: Paper-Covered Boards
• Edition: First Edition
• Condition: New
• Dust Jacket Condition: New
• Seller catalogs:
  • Poetry
  • Rare Poetry

About this title

Synopsis

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.

Review

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.