Otherwise elsewhere

David Rivard's new poetry collection describes the many powers--psychological and historical--that flow through people's lives in acts of faith, greed, pleasure, celebrity, gossip, and consolation. A teenage boy looking at a weathered gravestone wonders how many times he'll sign his name in his life; the forest on the move in Macbeth intersects with a blind man cured by Christ; a man coming out of a terrible dream of being lost is saved by touching his wife's hair. "For those of us who need it," one poem asserts, "instruction is everywhere." Full of unsettling humor and the careening movement of memory and imagination, Otherwise Elsewhere is Rivard's most astonishing work. "Rivard's poems move ... with an exhilarating, smart pace of association and evocation. The speed of mind, compressing details and emotions, covering the maximum distance in the least time, gives this writing its thrill ... These street wise, book-wise, eloquent poems have a bracing sureness and scope."--Robert Pinsky, The Washington Post. "His peculiar intensity and refusal to harbor delusion during a time when other writers of his generation seem more interested in shtick and posturing make his writing seem all the more necessary."--David Wojahn, The Southern Review. "A restless, original talent. The poems I've seen rank him in my mind as one of the best poets now writing."--Tom Sleigh, citation for the 2006 O.B. Hardison, Jr. Poetry Prize --Book Jacket.