Table Of ContentJEAN VALENTINE
UNDER DISCUSSION
Annie Finch and Marilyn Hacker, General Editors
Donald Hall, Founding Editor
Volumes in the Under Discussion series collect reviews and essays about
individual poets. The series is concerned with contemporary American and
English poets about whom the consensus has not yet been formed and the
:final vote has not been taken. Titles in the series include:
Jean Valentine: This-World Company
edited by Kazim Ali and John Hoppentholtr
On Frank Bidart: Faltening the Voice to the Page
edited by Liam Rector and Tree Swenson
On Louile Gluck.: Change What You See
edited by Joanne Fdt Diehl
On June. Tate
edited by Brian Henry
Robert Haydeu
edited by Laurence Goldstein and Robert Chrisman
Charles Sirnic
edited by Bruce ~gl
On Gwendolyn Brooks
edited by Stephon Caldwell Wright
On William Stalford
edited by Tom AndretVS
Denise Levertov
edited with an introduction by Albert Gelpi
ocw.
The Poetry D. Snodgrass
edited by Stephon Haven
On the Poetry of Pbilip Levine
edited by Christopher Buckley
Jame. Wright
edited by Peter Stitt and Frank Graziano
Anne Sexton
edited by Steven E. Colburn
On the Poetry of Galway Kinnell
edited by Howard Nelson
Robert Creeley's Life and Work
edited by John Wilson
On the Poetry ofA llen Ginsberg
edited by Lewis Hyde
Reading Adrienne Rich
edited by Jane Roberta Cooper
Elizabeth Bishop and Her Art
edited by IJoyd SCh ....r tz and Sybil P. Estess
Jean Valentine
This-World Company
Edited by Kazim Ali and John Hoppenthaler
the university of michigan press
Ann Arbor
Copyright © 2012 by Kazim Ali and John Hoppenthaler
All rights reserved
This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including
illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections
107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers
for the public press), without written permission from the publisher.
Published in the United States of America by
The University of Michigan Press
Manufactured in the United States of America
cPrinted on acid-free paper
2015 2014 2013 2012 4 3 2 1
A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Jean Valentine : this-world company / edited by Kazim Ali and John
Hoppenthaler.
p. cm. — (Under discussion)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-0-472-07183-8 (cloth : acid-free paper) — ISBN 978-0-472-05183-0
(pbk. : acid-free paper) — ISBN 978-0-472-02861-0 (e-book)
1. Valentine, Jean—Criticism and interpretation. I. Ali, Kazim, 1971–
II. Hoppenthaler, John.
PS3572.A39Z68 2012
811'.54—dc23 2012011070
A few of the essays in this book were previously published. Grateful acknowledgment is given for
permission to reprint the following essays, some of which appeared under the different title
indicated:
Kazim Ali: An earlier and modi‹ed version appeared in Orange Alert (University of
Michigan Press, 2010) as “Little Map: A Valentine”; Celia Bland, “Secret Book
Written in the Dirt: Jean Valentine’s Lucy: A Poem” appeared in American Poetry Review
39.2 (March–April 2010); Suzanne Cleary, “Be Still and Know: Silence in the Poetry
of Jean Valentine” appeared in Laurel Review40.2 (Summer 2006); James Harms, “Jean
Valentine: Remnants and Recognition” appeared in West Branch56 (Spring–Summer
2005); Brenda Hillman, “‘Listening’: The Swerve” appeared in Field73 (Fall 2005);
Lee Upton, “‘Dream Barker’: Preoedipal Fusion and Radiant Boundaries in Jean
Valentine” appeared in The Muse of Abandonment: Origin, Identity, Mastery in Five
American Poets(Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1998); and Michael
Waters,“‘Through Such Hard Wind and Light’: Jean Valentine’s Elegy for Elizabeth
Bishop” appeared in Field73 (Fall 2005).
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction 1
kazim ali
Little Light on the Road: An Informal Primer on Reading
Jean Valentine, in Six Brief Sections 11
catherine barnett
Dream Barker:Preoedipal Fusion and Radiant Boundaries
in Jean Valentine 18
lee upton
Pilgrims 39
lee briccetti
Orpheus and Eurydice and Gestures of Turning: Palimpsest
in the Poetry of Jean Valentine 43
kathleen fagley
On Jean Valentine’s The Messenger 60
philip booth
“Through Such Hard Wind and Light”: Jean Valentine’s
Elegy for Elizabeth Bishop 70
michael waters
Jean Valentine’s Spontaneous Mythologies 75
jonathan blunk
Lost and Found: Jean Valentine’s Poems of Childhood
and Motherhood 81
dorothy barresi
Lit from Inside: Jean Valentine’s River at Wolf 92
martha collins
Ghost Sonnets 104
mark doty
Incarnational 111
fanny howe
Remnants and Recognition 116
james harms
Be Still and Know: Silence in the Poetry of Jean Valentine 121
suzanne cleary
“This Close to God this Close to You”: 126
Incarnation in Jean Valentine
amy newman
Globe on Fire: Jean Valentine as a Political Poet 134
maggie anderson
Everyone Was Drunk: Reading Jean Valentine through a
Shot Glass Lens 144
jeffrey skinner
The Gift of the Double Swerve (Jean Valentine’s Endings) 152
brenda hillman
For Jean Valentine, Out of Thirty-‹ve Years 159
alan williamson
“The History of the World Without Words”: Mysticism and
Social Conscience in the Poetry of Jean Valentine 164
brian teare
“Awake too you are everyone”: Gestures of Empathy in
Jean Valentine’s New Poems 189
rachel moritz and juliet patterson
Where Do You Look for Me: The Afterlife in the Poems
of Jean Valentine 194
eve grubin
Artifact as Metaphor: Reading Nearness in Jean Valentine’s
Little Boat 199
miguel murphy
Secret Book Written in the Dirt: Jean Valentine’s Lucy: A Poem 214
celia bland
On Saying No: Valentine and Dickinson Break the Glass 223
julie carr
The Umweltof the Question: Notes on Territory and Desire 233
bhanu kapil
Contributors 239
Acknowledgments
I wish to acknowledge the work of my coeditor, John Hop-
penthaler, without whose initial work on this project, this book
would not have been possible. I want to further acknowledge
Suzanna Tamminen, who gave generous feedback and advice at an
earlier stage. Eric Gudas, Michael Klein, Kate Greenstreet, and
John Hoppenthaler all conducted interviews with Jean Valentine
that we could not include in this book, but these will be available
on-line at http://www.press.umich.edu/titleDetailDesc.do?id=
4348299.
The work of my two research assistants, Anna Silverstein and
Jesse Miller, contributed immeasurably to the completion of this
project. I would never have been able to manage it on my own
without their assistance. Martha Collins gave me the original im-
pulse to take on this work and provided injections of energy at
every needed moment.
Jonathan Blunk put in countless hours of tireless work to proof-
read the manuscript and the quoted texts of Jean Valentine’s poems.
Finally I want to thank Jean Valentine, whose writing occa-
sioned this work and whose poetry and presence continues to be a
beacon for me, as it has been for many others.
Kazim Ali
KAZIM ALI
Introduction
Perhaps the reason there has been little critical discussion on the
work of Jean Valentine should be obvious: what do you say about
work that traf‹cs so sublimely in the half-said, the unsaid, more
than that (or less than that?) the half-thought-of, the still unarticu-
lated, ever evanescent?
Still, with each passing year, she seems more and more the poet
of exactly our moment—one concerned with material immediacy,
the physical experiences of the body and the uncharted ineffable
realms equally. She’s in›uenced countless younger poets with her
devotion to a certain kind of embodied spiritual attention to indi-
vidual moments. In his book The Art of Attention Donald Revell
seems to call for a poetry exactly like Valentine’s, a poetry that is
rooted in the individual’s experience of the external and existing
world rather than a poetry dependent on “craft.” For Revell
“imagination” (perhaps by extension anything one might call
“craft”) proceeds not from invention but from observation:
The opened eye will see, and light will shape the materials given
freely to a poet. What need for invention? As it turns out, craft
is to poetry what invention is to the imagination—not antithet-
ical, but needless. The eye does not invent the light; there’s no
need. The mind makes no materials; it doesn’t have to. Imagi-
nation is the present state of things, and poems rejoice—in par-
ticular, in detail—that this is so.1
Though Valentine is more than ever being held up as an exemplar
by young poets writing in more experimental veins, more than one
of the essays in this book touches on Valentine’s ability to limn the
unknown, plumb the unspoken depths of human experiences, and
draw dream language into our waking life, practices that at ‹rst
glance might seem to align with a more Blakean or Romantic view
of the poetic endeavor.
Each of the essays tries to see the “how” and the “why” using
