Windmill: Essays from Four Mile Ranch by David Romtvedt (review)

B o o k R e v ie w s to the next poem to see what would come after the last rapid or after an encounter with a grizzly. I also like Walter’s idea that narrative does spring from landscape, that certain geographies embody stories, even important or mythic stories, if the traveler will only listen. Walter acknowledges the inspi­ ration of Barry Lopez’s writings about Alaska; it was Lopez who wrote elo­ quently about the interplay of landscape and narrative in Arctic Dreams. Furthermore, I like Walter’s control of imagery. In “Rain-Simple” he writes, “we slither through storm and valley, / yammering at bears that might exist, / with Indian bells on bony hands / and crazy voice chanting hope.” Finally, I like the flat realism and the proselike style of many of the poems in All Manner of Wild, which is printed on handsome text paper with a goodlooking cover and a photograph of the Brooks Range at the end of the book. A good poetry chapbook ought to be focused, one in which the writer maintains a narrative or develops a complex theme or centers on a partic­ ular metaphor. It seems to me that many small poetry presses would profit from insisting on some type of focus from their authors. Longhand Press in Golden, Colorado, has published such an enjoyable book from Eric Walter, a Colorado poet who takes the reader on an exciting journey through a beautiful part of Alaska. Windmills: Essays from Four Mile Ranch. By David Romtvedt. Santa Fe, New Mexico: Red Crane Books, 1997. 252 pages, $14.95. Reviewed by Steve Merchant Smithfield, Utah Windmills contains a series of essays that take us for a ramble, literally and figuratively, around the environs of Buffalo, Wyoming, and a great many other places. David Romtvedt writes with an affectionate and evoca­ tive voice of the people, places, and things that he calls home. While Buffalo is the geographic center of this book, windmills are its spiritual cen­ ter. The windmills he helps maintain in good working order on his fatherin -law’s Four Mile Ranch define who he is as well as what he does. In “The Windmills” the author notes, “The Windmill is an elegant machine . . . I mean both simple and sophisticated. . . . [T]he windmill is more religious artifact than it is a water retrieval system.” In “Economy” the author says, “the windmill maintenance and everything else—is useful work, fulfilling. Doing it 1feel alive. I am inside a universe, not looking in.” In “Buffalo” Romtvedt writes respectfully of the Basque people who came to this part of the country to find land, work, and perhaps some­ thing better than they had in their homeland. The author is a member of this Basque community by marriage, and that familial relationship, W A L 3 3 (1 ) S p r in g 1 9 9 8 with Four Mile R anch’s windmills, defines the author’s place in time and space. Like Thoreau, Romtvedt often stops to examine objects, thoughts, and feelings as he saunters along. The essays and commentary are interesting and enjoyable but sometimes distracting in their disconnected way. In “Sim on,” the concluding essay, the author, speaking of a branding iron his father-in-law has given him, says, “The branding iron, like the stories, makes tangible something that is just beyond our ability to articulate, something that, though not invisible, is hard to see.” And finally, “W hatever we’re doing, we’ve done it before and will do it again. It’s true of Four Mile and everywhere else— a little joke life plays. But the joke doesn’t have to be at our expense. The windmills break; we repair them. They break again. We repair them again and they break yet again and— H a!— it’s a pleasure each time.” Life goes on. We endure. High Tide in Tucson: Essays from Now or Never. By Barbara Kingsolver. New York: HarperCollins, 1995. 273 pages, $22.00. Reviewed by Lois Ann Goossen Grand Haven, Michigan Barbara Kingsolver in her book High Tide in Tucson leads readers out of the front door of her home in Tucson...