A Flower Whose Name I Do Not Know

David Romtvedt, Wyoming poet and veteran political activist, contributes significantly to the literature of the American West with A Flower Whose Name I Do Not Know, joining a long lime of western poets in his quest for purity. Only through purification is salvation achievable: "a single pure soul/can save the earth." This quest for the pure soul leads Romtvedt outward, expanding the geography of the West from Wyoming, Montana, Arizona, and Alaska to Zaire, Rwanda, the Ukraine, and Japan. Romtvedt seeks redemption through nonviolent resistance, as in "Black Beauty, a Praise," a powerful incantation chanted at the Trident submarine Peace Blockade in 1982, or through social awareness of the terrors of political oppression in Guatemala: "if you push/a series of needles through a person's tongue,/it becomes hard for that person to speak/ and when finally the needles are removed,/it is nearly impossible." Perhaps the pure souls are the activists in small boats blocking the submarine, or perhaps the pure souls are the martyrs of oppression throughout the Third World. But Romtvedt looks homeward also for redemption. He examines his family--his father, an Arizona laborer; his mother, of whom he says, "In my family, it is my mother who can both fly/and sit"; and his sister, who "opens her mouth and swallows" the mushroom cloud of an atomic bomb. Ultimately, though, Romtvedt must look into himself to determine if he is the pure soul who can rescue the world from itself. Thus he deftly mingles time and space, weaving from the town square on Veterans Day to Peace Park, Hiroshima, or fading from Wyoming snows to a Salvadoran clinic. Then again, with expert sleight of hand, he exchanges roles with others--his father, or a woman giving birth--furthering his quest for purity. Romtvedt reminds us that this world is our home, that the one pure soul who can save the earth must be us: "I stand up to walk away./ As I open the door/ I am slapped in the face/ By another world/ And it is this one."