A Flower Whose Name I Do Not Know (National Poetry Series) [Paperback]

David Romtvedt (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Selected for the National Poetry series by John Haines, this volume includes family history and poems about childhood as well as work informed by Romtvedt's ( Moon ) adult experiences: his opposition to the draft during the Vietnam War, his work in the Peace Corps in Africa and his protest against the Trident nuclear submarine base on Puget Sound. Happily, the poems are free of polemics. Rather, they demonstrate Romtvedt's sympathy for the spectrum of humanity, from the nameless victims of Guatemalan terrorism to Soviet poet Osip Mandelstam, who died in Stalin's Gulag. One of the most compelling poems describes how the poet's grandmother and her sisters were forced as children to stand in a row in their living room while their father aimed a rifle at them. The poem ends with the haunting refrain, "It was winter and we skated, the ice so clear it was blue." Technically, the volume is eclectic. The opening poem is written in a deadpan and prosaic voice, but the title poem, with its dreamy image of a flower floating in darkness, is surreal. Although the language is well chosen and seems musically correct throughout, the numerous shifts of voice and sensibility are troubling.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

"When I was a boy the neighbor/ across the street built a bomb shelter." Romtvedt's work is at once personal and political, an awkward mix for most poets, but he manages to come down on issues and still keep himself and his experiences at the center of the poem. Besides the bomb, he addresses such contemporary topics as a "peace blockade," a nuclear accident in the Ukraine, and a Trident submarine jockeying for position in the Straits of Juan de Fuca near Bangor, Washington: "The air is the same air/ I breathed in Paradise/ and Buchenwald." Romtvedt travels from Hiroshima to Guatemala, from Zaire and Rwanda to Arkansas, collecting people and their stories. He is Everyman (and woman): His poems make it easy to recognize our common stake in world affairs. Highly recommended for anyone who reads poetry seriously.
- Louis McKee, Painted Bride Arts Ctr., Philadelphia
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Paperback: 80 pages
• Publisher: Copper Canyon Press (January 1, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1556590466
• ISBN-13: 978-1556590467
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,221,153 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Redemptive West of David Romtvedt, May 24, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: A Flower Whose Name I Do Not Know (National Poetry Series) (Paperback)

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."