Wishbone Voices by William Rivera

Wishbone Voices is nothing less than magnificent. I could not stop reading! It’s a treasure to find a lyrical poet influenced by art, literature and history, and able to blend all that so effortlessly within the complexity of personal experience. A youth’s background is recalled here with great intimacy and intuition, “written roses after rain,” yet the human face is what emerges over and over connecting us to all that’s lost and still will not leave. Rivera answers to poetry’s highest callings in this book; he writes “Beyond love’s boundaries, I dare not look,” and yet he does, And we are the better and the richer for it.

–Grace Cavalieri, “The Poet and the Poem from the Library of Congress”

“William Rivera‘s poems are crisp and clear. Some take us back to a New Orleans childhood, some take us to what is no longer there. Other poems take us around the world through the sensibilities of a well-read and well-traveled poet. His is a strong, sure voice, and one well worth listening to and following.”

–H. A. Maxson, Poet and Author of “On the Sonnets of Robert Frost”

“William Rivera‘s “Wishbone Voices” blends memory, and myth. Rivera explores the inner urges of humanity through lyric poems that cut across pop culture, literary history and mankind’s follies. Rivera’s lyricism is tight and controlled, and shaped with a sculptor’s fine instincts. Rivera isn’t afraid to stare down mortality and discover the beauty in our ephemeral nature.

–Stephen Scott Whitaker, managing editor of The Broadkill Review, poet and member of the National Books Critics Circle