Certainty [Paperback]

David Romtvedt (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 1996

"...beautiful, unusual pieces. Romtvedt strips his voice to only that which he can say with certainty."--Sharon Doubiago

Editorial Reviews

Review

"It is nice to hear from this poet who at his best gathers what is serious and what is dreamy and what is funny and makes them stand up together. David Romtvedt is like a loyal consul who represents a species that has done some terrible things: undeluded, he still loves us, and keeps laying out more high-hearted policies for us all." -- Carol Bly.

About the Author

David Romtvedt

Product Details

• Paperback: 96 pages
• Publisher: White Pine Press; 1st edition. edition (April 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1877727598
• ISBN-13: 978-1877727597
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,890,824 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This Guy Deserves to be Read!, March 8, 2009

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Giordano Bruno (Wherever I am, I am.) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

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This review is from: Certainty (Paperback)

Here I am, the first ammy reviewer of a collection of poems published 13 years ago. That says a lot about the spaces available in our world for the thoughts that get recited as poetry. A poet, like any other species, has to adapt to his/her ecological niche, and the open niche today is painfully cramped: no more mythology or metaphysics, no chivalry, pastoral love codings, lays of heroism, apollonian lyricsms, or dionysian defiances. David Romtvedt's themes are his own life choices, his place in his own mental Wyoming, his confessions and his alibis. As much as Robert Lowell or John Berryman, Romtvedt is a 'confessional' poet, though stylistically he is continents away from those two. His language is closer to Wendell Berry or Billy Collins, yet he is less emotionally manicured than either of those two. The anger he expresses at the folly of war - he is apparently 'haunted' by the aftermath of the Vietnam atrocity - is reminiscent of Robinson Jeffers, but Romtvedt is far less grandiose.

Romtvedt's language can be so plain that it's hard to say why it should be called poetry. But then you'll 'hear' something in it that sets you vibrating like the sympathetic strings of a sitar or a viola d'amore. Here's a poem that had that effect on me:

THE WINDMILL
I pull on the dark coveralls and climb the delicate ladder.
At the top I pull myself onto the narrow platform
and clip the heavy safety harness around the steel shaft.
I take a wrench from my pocket and remove the tin plate
covering the oilpan. The cogged wheels rest, partially
submerged in their bath of graying oil. I drain this oil
into a bucket and lower it with a rope to the ground.
As I pour in fresh oil the wind rises. Though the rotor
blades are locked they try to turn and the assembly
swings around threatening to knock me into space.
I lean against the mill and pour. The wind catches
the stream of oil making it fly in long looping threads.
Where it lands it will kill the grass. Back on earth
I release the brake and the blades spin, singing in the wind.
The water spills into the stock tank. It is pure and clear,
and so, gratefully, I cup my greasy hands and drink.

I stumbled upon David Romtvedt in the current issue (Vol. 33, Issue 3) of a small literary magazine called Pilgrimage, published in Colorado. One of Romtvedt's poems about his own marriage had been featured on Garrison Keillor's radio show. A listener had been pleased by it, and ordered one of Romtvedt's books. However, the listener was infuriated to discover that Romtvedt also wrote poems about the shame he felt over America's foreign wars. A brief correspondence followed, full of outrage and sincerity, between the poet and his rejecting reader. The magazine Pilgrimage printed both poems and both sides of the correspondence, quite a brave act of openness. Openness is Romtvedt's poetic strength - openness and the old rough American integrity.