David Rivard

reads from

Standoff:
Poems

This event includes a book signing

Date

Sep
15
Thursday
September 15, 2016
7:00 PM ET

Location

Harvard Book Store
1256 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02138

Tickets

This event is free; no tickets are required.

Harvard Book Store welcomes award-winning poet DAVID RIVARD for a reading from his latest poetry collection, Standoff: Poems.

About 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.

Praise

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

“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

David Rivard
David Rivard

David Rivard

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.

Photo Credit: Fabio Bracarda

Harvard Book Store
1256 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02138

Walking from the Harvard Square T station: 2 minutes

As you exit the station, reverse your direction and walk east along Mass. Ave. in front of the Cambridge Savings Bank. Cross Dunster St. and proceed along Mass. Ave for three more blocks. You will pass Au Bon Pain, JP Licks, and TD Bank. Harvard Book Store is located at the corner of Mass. Ave. and Plympton St.

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