Certainty

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.