"Jazz rhythms and capital-R Romantic hopes infuse Rivard's fourth collection, a comeback of sorts from 2000's Bewitched Playground featuring 'three distinct/ not to mention// cloudless/ dimensions to walk inside/ the visible.' It's not all sweetness and light, however. Devoted to sketches of human universals, Rivard, who teaches at Tufts University, also gathers plenty of local color: he sees Boston and Cambridge as cities where too much has happened — too much history, too many young people on benders, too much higher education: 'the boat crew/ from Alpha Chi' sails down the Charles, and adults console themselves with aquarium shows, but 'the wish to be given back/ the child you were once won't work.' His free verse manages unusual variety: drastically variant line lengths and extraordinarily long sentences make up his defiant, committed search for grace. Some of Rivard's most sensitive poems concern parents and grade-school — aged children: others are simply sketches of urban scenes in the offhand yet observant manner of August Kleinzahler, a 'day of creeping cars rain-flogged,' a glimpse of 'the skates of a weeping nun.'" Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)