"I love these intense, brilliantly crafted poems. Wise Poison is perfectly pitched and uniquely American, a beautiful, angry, heartbreaking, celebratory, and powerful book."—Thomas Lux
In Wise Poison David Rivard gives us a mind hard at work on the most vital questions: Who am I? What do I love? What can be trusted? At issue in these passionate arguments with the self are the "curious forces" that surround us in every part of our lives. In an airport lounge in the Yucatán, in the song of a street musician, or simply in the pulsing of skin along the neck, Rivard finds connections and doubt, and reason for both comfort and rage.
"The poems in David Rivard's compelling and delicious new book do not smother you with grandiosity nor come creeping towards you bowed down in self-effacement. These are poems of a human scale; they are complicated, muscled with irony, and their wonderful voice is startling in its power to move, interest, delight."—Lynn Emanuel