With Still on Earth, David Romtvedt addresses the sometimes disconcerting, sometimes thrilling, and, if we accept the writer's premise, always wacky crossings experienced by figures identified as the person, the poet, and the angel. All three intersect and collide with the society and culture within which they exist, prompting speculation that uncertainty could be preferable to knowing. Romtvedt's delightfully plainspoken and immediate poems probe the mysterious purpose of our stay on earth with humor, candor, and grace. A poem, the father in the book argues, is worth next to nothing. And while the son disagrees, having experienced transformation through language, he also recognizes that the poem cannot buy the groceries and pay the rent. Or perhaps it can and it's just tricky. After having devoted years to writing, the poet remains uncertain and speculates that uncertainty is not so bad and is preferable to knowing. Between the person and the poet, Still on Earth presents the angel who seems to have the same father that the person and the poet had. The two fathers are too close for comfort. For the angel, we must imagine a being with no experience of the physical suddenly confronted with the demands of the body, a being both naive and worldly-otherworldly. The angel has been here before. In Romtvedt's reckoning, we all have. It's just hard to remember.
David Romtvedt's recent books of poetry include No Way: An American "Tao Te Ching," a finalist for the High Plains Book Award, and Dilemmas of the Angels. A winner of the National Poetry Series, Romtvedt has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Wyoming Arts Council. For seven years, he served as Wyoming's poet laureate.
"David Romtvedt's particular alchemy is to embody his poems fully in the senses even as they draw on an ethereal oneness that finds as much room in the firmament for our absurdities as for our graces." - Teresa Jordan "The poems in Still on Earth are deeply serious yet cheerily absurdist. . . . Clear and straightforward, Romtvedt's poems are filled with surprises, with undercurrents rising to the surface." - Mary Swander "Romtvedt renders encounters-whether alien, angelic, or everyday-in a finely tuned voice that is unassuming but incisive, and always profoundly moving. Still on Earth opens splendidly with 'Interstellar' being the best poem about aliens and French-speaking dogs I've seen in a long time." - William Wenthe "Romtvedt's subjects are big and significant-mortality, love, wonder, fear, the enormous and self-evident mystery that is time. But he speaks of and to these immemorial poetic themes in exceptionally lucid and yet sidelong terms, because he knows-he says so, directly-that 'the universe belongs to those who dance,' and in speaking so he makes us hope, and believe, that that is true." - Robert Wrigley
