WEBVTT

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We've been making a
habit of celebrating

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the accomplishments of some of
the graduates of our MFA program

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here.

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I'm particularly happy tonight
to be able to host David Rivard.

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We were Fellows together at
the Fine Arts Work Center

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in 1984 and '85, both arriving
with our carloads of doubts

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and insecurities, most of which
are probably still with us.

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I've got mine, though maybe
our cars are a little better.

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But we've had longer to
think about our doubts

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and insecurities.

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I've said many
times how important

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I think the friendships
between writers

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are and mentioned
what Donald Hall said

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about the history of
writing also being

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the history of friendships.

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And that's certainly true.

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I remember most
fondly about the time

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that David and I shared in
Provincetown where those kinds

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of conversations about poetry--

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where you really
get to questioning

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your own assumptions.

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And I'll be grateful
always for his, I guess,

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called generous
cruelties to my poems

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when they needed it and his
wise eye in looking at my words.

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So it's a real
pleasure for me to be

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able to, in an official
way, welcome him here.

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Rivard's first book, Torque, won
the Agnes Lynch Starrett prize

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from the University
of Pittsburgh Press.

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His second, Wise Poison,
won the James Laughlin Award

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of the Academy of
American Poets.

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He's also received
an NEA fellowship

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and currently teaches at
Sarah Lawrence College

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and in the low residency MFA
program at Vermont College.

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He's also poetry editor
at Harvard Review.

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There are images from "Torque"
that have haunted my imagination

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for years.

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A man crazed on angel
dust, swinging a 2

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by 4 at his friend in a park
in Fall River, Massachusetts.

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A Vietnamese woman outside the
Gateway Cinema in San Francisco

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selling plastic bags of
garlic, little packages

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that become nationalistic
stand-ins for war damaged

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hearts.

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A worker in a drape factory
escaping to the attic

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where he finds peace
in killing pigeons.

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Real people, real
places, the real strife

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and consequences
of fallible lives.

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These poems are oddly
both tender and brusque.

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In Wise Poison, Rivard
breaks the narrative.

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He turns to explore the story
of his inner life, its direction

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and indirection, its Rivard
against Rivard contradictions.

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In "Big Mood Swing," he
reports, for the last few weeks,

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I haven't refused any, not
a single feeling, not one.

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I haven't failed to bow
toward each for hours,

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to speak enormously
with each for at least

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the minimum minutes.

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He comes up after his study
with no facile formulas

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for curing the condition
of having feelings,

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only with a seasoned
commitment to that condition.

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Please welcome David Rivard.

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[APPLAUSE]

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Hey.

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