Award-winning poet David Romtvedt lives in the high, harsh, dry plains of northeastern Wyoming in the heart of a Basque community, where the struggle to survive shapes all who live there. Using the windmill as a metaphor, as Thoreau used the pond, Romtvedt takes the reader on a philosophical and spiritual search of fundamental truths in the commonplace elements of daily existence.

David Romtvedt's No Way: An American ""Tao Te Ching"" explores the art of living in the fast-paced, dangerous, unpredictable contemporary world. Lucid and wise in the spirit of its ancient Chinese predecessor, No Way functions as a kind of offbeat-yet-deadly-serious manual on the conduct of life. This slightly tongue-in-cheek take on the Tao's advice acknowledges that nobody likes being told how to live, least of all the author himself. With an openness to complexity and mystery, in tones that range from cool to passionate, No Way brings the Tao into the social turmoil of a twenty-first-century United States beset by political strife, mass shootings, and financial greed. Romtvedt combats cynicism and malaise with wry verse that positions itself in the role of the trickster. The voice of these poems can be serious and contradictory yet also humorous and welcoming. By suggesting that the days of the ancient Tao are gone for good, No Way offers readers an invitation to guide themselves forward, free of sages and rulers.

In the series of poems that underpins this collection, David Romtvedt imagines the daily lives of angels as well as other, more earthly, concerns. Whether he is considering the work of raising a child or imagining the work of the divine, Romtvedt displays an appreciation for all that surrounds us. His poems explore features of the Western world while offering accounts of life in Nicaragua, Rwanda, and the Congo. Throughout the collection, he displays an awareness of our remarkably diverse and intrinsically connected planet. A meditation on the ever-present need to balance our exterior life with our spiritual one, Dilemmas of the Angels is a masterful testament to a universal human struggle.