{"id":1306,"date":"2011-05-19T00:01:16","date_gmt":"2011-05-19T04:01:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/2011\/05\/19\/david-rivard-how-else-say\/"},"modified":"2011-05-15T21:02:33","modified_gmt":"2011-05-16T01:02:33","slug":"david-rivard-how-else-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/2011\/05\/19\/david-rivard-how-else-say\/","title":{"rendered":"David Rivard, &#8220;How Else to Say It&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" id=\"image1305\" src=\"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/david-rivard.jpg\" alt=\"david-rivard.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>And the guilt that must be got rid of<br \/>\nall one&#8217;s life<br \/>\nhow does my neighbor feel about that?<br \/>\nthese appearing but feckless days<br \/>\nvain or proud<br \/>\nwith riverine lavender &#038; lupine in hand<br \/>\na true lion of Judah is what<br \/>\nhe is<br \/>\nwhile waiting for a light snow cover<br \/>\nand insulin<br \/>\nthere&#8217;s slush on his G-Unit sneakers<br \/>\nmuffin crumbs on his scarf<br \/>\nan aging incendiary<br \/>\ncosmopolitan but unfussy<br \/>\nback from an early morning Mass<br \/>\nand Holy Communion.<\/p>\n<p>How else to say it<br \/>\nexcept that it&#8217;s not such a bad way to make a living<br \/>\nbringing home<br \/>\nsome sign as unshakeable as ashes<br \/>\non this particular Ash Wednesday&#8217;s forehead<br \/>\nthe quiet clear reminder of a smudged thumbprint<br \/>\nabove his eyes<br \/>\nbut in those eyes<br \/>\na shine like the feeling inexplicable<br \/>\nto anyone lacking the sweet understanding<br \/>\nof a dog in boyhood<br \/>\nthat to pee against the mossed bark of Juniper pine<br \/>\nis to be real in your soul.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.powells.com\/partner\/29017\/biblio\/1555975739\" target=\"_blank\"><i>Otherwise Elsewhere<\/i><\/a> is the fifth collection of poems by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.davidrivard.net\/\" target=\"blank\">David Rivard<\/a>. You can read &#8220;Forehead&#8221; and &#8220;Lives&#8221; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.davidrivard.net\/otherwise_elsewhere_104725.htm\" target=\"_blank\">at Rivard&#8217;s website<\/a>; the Academy of American Poets has &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.poets.org\/viewmedia.php\/prmMID\/22252\" target=\"_blank\">Plural Happiness<\/a>.&#8221; The collection also includes &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.bu.edu\/agni\/poetry\/online\/2011\/rivard.html\" target=\"_blank\">Townie Gossip (Since You Asked)<\/a>&#8221; (<i>AGNI Online<\/i>)&#8221; and, of course, &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.aprweb.org\/poem\/otherwise-elsewhere\" target=\"_blank\">Otherwise Elsewhere<\/a>&#8221; (although the version published in <i>American Poetry Review<\/i> is markedly different than the one in the book). And the literary website <i>Num&#233;ro Cinq<\/i> posted <a href=\"http:\/\/dgvcfaspring10.wordpress.com\/2011\/04\/09\/four-poems-from-otherwise-elsewhere-by-david-rivard\/\" target=\"_blank\">four more poems<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;What I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve always been interested in is moods&#8212;my own and the world\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s,&#8221; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bu.edu\/agni\/interviews\/online\/2006\/flescher.html\" target=\"_blank\" >Rivard said in a 2006 interview<\/a>, &#8220;and, often, that is about as close to subject matter as I can get now. And anyway, our emotional lives are so complicated, rich, and full of illusions and blind spots. So the purpose of writing a poem in some ways is to be surprised by discovering this thing that you didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know about yourself or the world. In that case, the stories you tell yourself are the least interesting thing about you. And almost always untrue. Or not true enough.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>And the guilt that must be got rid of all one&#8217;s life how does my neighbor feel about that? these appearing but feckless days vain or proud with riverine lavender &#038; lupine in hand a true lion of Judah is what he is while waiting for a light snow cover and insulin there&#8217;s slush on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1306"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1306"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1306\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}