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Bewitched Playground -- Poems by David Rivard

David Rivards's poems are wonderful dances between humor and sincerity, stark Emersonian observation, and tongue in cheek Schuyleresque introspection. He transforms the actual world into sign and symbol of itself. A woman or lamp is there in literal fact, but also sign for hundreds of different impressions and connotations. His thoughts are clear extended breaths, wrapping across several lines and waterfalling down the page, yet never meandering.

Bewitched Playground is a wonderfully American collection of verse. Rivard speaks to fatherhood, to Bob Dylan, to eulogy, to Sears and bottled water, to dozens of people in dozens of cultural settings, to the American landscape as it moves through the seasons. His voice is constant and quick, even as he moves across form and stanza, altering line structure and playing with modes. There is politic within the book, but it is subtextual, tied into indoor pools, boxing rings, and the scattering of children's bath toys.

Rivard may be guilty of occasionally dipping into sap or extended rhetoric, but who among us hasn't? Within the context of a northeastern poetics of fatherhood, it is seamless and funny. A quip about his wife's bumper sticker in one poem gives way to a philosophical extraction of Jung and gender the next. Rivard is Bruce Springstein at his best, and Frank O'Hara at his brightest. Rivard is the poet's cool uncle who plays guitar and seems to know something the other uncles don't, but he's not all smug about it.

Labels: Recommended Reading