Standoff

"David Rivard, presents a range of memories and circumstances where the poet stares down mortality and emerges from the skirmishes with his compassion and perceptiveness intact. Sometimes, those struggles ensue because of the barrage of bad news and anxiety that pervade our media-filled culture. Other losses are personal, as with the death of the speaker’s father and the unexpected loss of a friend. Yet always the work conveys a sense of warmth and a keen appreciation for the way 'that the world is built/ out of shiftings & abrasions/ you see how/ you’ll have to make allowances.' The speaker knows the futility of rehashing past mistakes, insists that generosity has to exist and grapples with whether there is a key to life. The poems don’t present easy answers; instead, they offer an astute guide through everyday experiences, including the desire to both lose and elevate the self."—Elizabeth Lund, The Washington Post

“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

“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