Light me down : the new & collected poems of Jean Valentine

Light me down The new & collected poems of Jean Valentine

Jean Valentine

Book - 2024

"In these last prayerful poems by Jean Valentine, the poet visits loss, death, and transitional states. Full of longing, connections, and intergenerational knowledge, Valentine continues the mystical journey that has carried her through a lifetime devoted to poetry. Spirits connect. Guides are everywhere as she is "leaving all worlds behind." Love doesn't disappear but is steadfast and without boundaries. A poet of deep tenderness for everything living, from a dying cricket to her living and lost friends, Valentine is full of gratitude for this world, writing: "This is happiness. Old life,/ I'm glad, all my rubbed life/ I was found,/ I was written on a wall in air." The reader too is full of gratitude for ...these moving last missives from a great poet"--

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Subjects
American poetry > 20th century.
poetry.
Poetry
Poetry.
Genres
poetry
Poetry
Published
New Gloucester, Maine : Alice James Books [2024]
Language
English
Main Author
Jean Valentine (author)
Other Authors
Anne Marie Macari (writer of foreword)
Item Description
Includes indexes.
Physical Description
451 pages ; 24 cm
ISBN
9781949944600
9781949944594
  • Foreword
  • New Poems (2016-2020)
  • Light Me Down
  • The Ring
  • To My Teacher
  • Thirst
  • Image:
  • Trust me
  • Pneumonia, January
  • Dear Adrienne
  • Yeats' Stance
  • The Teacher
  • The Cricket
  • Sparrow
  • Trust
  • In a Diner
  • For Tomas Tranströmer & Max Ritvo
  • February, 2017
  • The Longing
  • The 40's
  • Poem with a Line from Ko Un
  • Dear Merton's God
  • In Ireland
  • In China
  • For a friend who died young
  • "Regard all dharmas as dreams"
  • For Monty
  • A minute of silence for C.D. Wright
  • The Prison
  • After Fernando Traverso
  • Here
  • Dream Barker (1965)
  • First Love
  • For a Woman Dead at Thirty
  • Miles from Home
  • To Salter's Point
  • Lines in Dejection
  • Sleep Drops Its Nets
  • Déjà-vu
  • Sunset at Wellfleet
  • Asleep over Lines from Willa Cather
  • Cambridge by Night
  • To a Friend
  • Waiting
  • Sasha and the Poet
  • The Second Dream
  • A Bride's Hours
  • 1. Dawn
  • 2. The Bath
  • 3. Night
  • Afterbirth
  • Sarah's Christening Day
  • Tired of London
  • Cambridge, April 27, 1957
  • New York, April 27, 1962
  • September 1963
  • Riverside
  • For Teed
  • My Grandmother's Watch
  • The Beast with Two Backs
  • The Little Flower
  • Sex
  • Adam and Eve: Poem on Folded Paper
  • Dream Barker
  • To My Soul
  • Pilgrims (1969)
  • The Couples
  • Fireside
  • Solomon
  • In the Museum
  • By the Boat Pond
  • The Summer House
  • Woods
  • Her dream: the child
  • Orpheus and Eurydice
  • Goodbye
  • Separation
  • Thinking about Cain
  • Dearest,
  • April
  • Broken-down Girl
  • Bin Dream, West College East, D-II
  • Bin Dream #2, Interview with Stravinsky
  • Death House
  • Archangel
  • Half an Hour
  • Visiting Day at School
  • The Child Jung
  • Coltrane, Syeeda's Song Flute
  • Photograph of Delmore Schwartz
  • The Torn-down Building
  • Moon Man
  • The Child and the Terrorist, The Terrorist and the Child
  • Night
  • Pilgrims
  • Ordinary Things (1974)
  • After Elegies
  • 'Autumn Day'
  • He said,
  • Forces
  • Kin
  • Anesthesia
  • After Elegies (2)
  • 3 A.M. in New York
  • Space
  • Letter from a Country Room
  • A Child's Death
  • Revolution
  • Three Voices One Night in the Community Kitchen
  • The Knife
  • Seeing L'Atalante
  • "Twenty Days' Journey" by Huub Oosterhuis translated from the Dutch with Judith Herzberg
  • This Hate
  • This Minute
  • Couvre-Feu: after Paul Eluard
  • Fidelities
  • Susan's Photograph
  • Outside the Frame
  • Forces (2): Song
  • The Messenger (1979)
  • The Messenger
  • Beka, 14
  • Dufy Postcard
  • The Field
  • Living Together
  • Here Now
  • The Forgiveness Dream: Man from the Warsaw Ghetto
  • Turn
  • Prayer in Fever
  • Working
  • Silences: A Dream of Governments
  • After Elegies (3)
  • The Messenger
  • Two Translations
  • Huub Oosterhuis: Orpheus
  • Osip Mandelstam: 394
  • Solitudes
  • December 21st
  • Sanctuary
  • What Happened
  • Turn (2): After Years
  • The Burden of Memory
  • February 9th
  • "Love and Work": Freud Dying
  • Letter from a Stranger
  • "Actuarial File"
  • Lines from a Story
  • March 21st
  • Home.Deep.Blue (1989)
  • Willi, Home
  • To Raphael, angel of happy meeting
  • Primitive Painting: Liberation Day
  • Awake, This Summer
  • Mandelstam
  • The Drinker's Wife Writes Back
  • Birthday Letter from South Carolina
  • The Counselor Retires, and Then He Dies
  • Juliana
  • Visit
  • Snow Landscape, in a Glass Globe
  • Everything Starts with a Letter
  • About Love
  • Little Song in Indian Summer
  • The King
  • High School Boyfriend
  • Tonight I Can Write.
  • Trust Me
  • The River At Wolf (1992)
  • X
  • Spring and Its Flowers
  • The Summer Was Not Long Enough
  • Still Life, for Matisse
  • Still Life: in the Epidemic
  • Ikon
  • The Year of the Snake
  • The One You Wanted to Be Is the One You Are
  • Ironwood
  • Bud
  • To a Young Poet
  • Foraging
  • Alfred and the Abortion
  • Redemption
  • Seeing You
  • The Free Abandonment Blues
  • The First Station
  • Night Lake
  • The Badlands Said
  • The Missouri Speaks
  • The River at Wolf
  • The Ring
  • Barrie's Dream, the Wild Geese
  • Fox Glacier
  • Lindis Pass, Borage
  • By the Tekapo River, 100 Degrees
  • After Consciousness of This Big Form
  • Everyone Was Drunk
  • In Fear (1)
  • In Fear (2)
  • In This Egg
  • The Under Voice
  • Come Ahkmatova
  • James Wright: in Memory
  • Wish-Mother
  • At Cullens' Island
  • The Wisdom Gravy
  • American River Sky Alcohol Father
  • The Morning of My Mother's Death
  • The Night of My Mother's Death
  • Second Mother
  • The Sea of Serenity
  • My Mother's Body, My Professor, My Bower
  • Butane
  • At My Mother's Grave
  • We Go Through Our Mother's Things
  • Death Ashphodel
  • To the Memory of David Kalstone
  • The First Angel
  • At the Door
  • Yield Everything, Force Nothing
  • Alone, Alive
  • Flower
  • Skate
  • Guardian Angel in New York
  • To Plath, to Sexton
  • The Power Table
  • Growing Darkness, Growing Light (1997)
  • Rain
  • Siek, Away from Home
  • Friend
  • Homesick
  • New Life
  • Bees
  • The Tractors
  • River Jordan
  • Night Porch
  • *
  • World-light
  • Snow Family
  • To the Black Madonna of Chartres
  • Tell Me, What Is the Soul
  • Mastectomy
  • Secret Room, Danger House
  • Red for Blood
  • Yellow for Gold
  • Green for the Land
  • Black for the People
  • Home
  • Long Irish Summer Day
  • *
  • Dog Skin Coat
  • Fellini in Purgatory
  • Elegy for Jane Kenyon
  • You Are Not One in a Sequence
  • Alcohol
  • Where Do You Look for Me?
  • Documentary: AIDS Support Group
  • Poem with Words by Thornton Dial
  • A Bit of Rice
  • The Night of Wally's Service, Wally Said,
  • Rodney Dying
  • Rodney Dying (2)
  • Father Lynch Returns from the Dead
  • The Baby Rabbits in the Garden
  • *
  • Mother and Child, Body and Soul
  • Soul
  • Soul (2)
  • The Mother Dreams
  • Fistula
  • Soul (3)
  • *
  • Open Heart
  • Listening
  • The Cradle of the Real Life (2000)
  • The Pen
  • Elegy for Jane Kenyon (2)
  • Black Wolf
  • Mother Bones
  • They lead me
  • Your mouth "appeared to me"
  • Mare and Newborn Foal
  • Truth
  • October Premonition
  • Rodney Dying (3)
  • November
  • Labrador
  • 1945
  • Leaving
  • Running for a train
  • The Welsh poet
  • Radio: Poetry Reading, NPR
  • The Tower Roof
  • For a Women Dead at Thirty (2)
  • The Blind Stirring of Love
  • Little Map
  • The Drinker
  • The Drinker (2)
  • Happiness
  • Happiness (2): The I Ching
  • He leaves them:
  • Away from you
  • Child
  • Part II. Her Lost Book
  • Door in the Mountain (2004)
  • Annunciation
  • *
  • In our child house
  • Nine
  • The girl
  • Mother
  • Eighteen
  • "She Sang"
  • A Bone Standing Up
  • The Hawthorn Robin Mends with Thorns
  • Out in a sailboat
  • I came to you
  • *
  • Cousin
  • The Very Bad Horse
  • Once
  • So many secrets
  • Eleventh Brother
  • Once in the nights
  • Under the gold
  • The Windows
  • Go Clear
  • The Coin
  • October morning
  • I heard my left hand
  • In the evening
  • *
  • We cut the new day
  • Occurrence of White
  • How have I hurt you?
  • Do flies remember us
  • You drew my head
  • The little, faintly blue clay eggs
  • Happiness (3)
  • Letter
  • I could never let go
  • The Basket House
  • The House and the World
  • In your eyes
  • Woman, Leaving
  • Trim my hoofs
  • Two Poems for Matthew Shepard
  • The Blue Dory, the Soul
  • The Rally
  • The Growing Christ of Tzintzuntzan
  • Sheep
  • To the Bardo
  • Rodney Dying (4)
  • *
  • Door in the Mountain
  • Monarch butterfly
  • My old body
  • Inkwell daybreak
  • The path between
  • The Night Sea
  • The Shirt
  • One Foot in the Dark
  • A weed green
  • Fears: Night Cabin
  • So wild
  • I have lived in your face
  • A goldfinch in the rain
  • The grain of the wood
  • The push or fly
  • I would be
  • Avalon
  • Do you remember?
  • Advent Calendar
  • We didn't know each other
  • Touch with your finger
  • Noon in the Line Outside
  • Inside
  • Your number is lifting off my hand
  • *
  • The Needle North
  • The Passing
  • In the Burning Air
  • Little house
  • Little Boat (2007)
  • La Chalupa, the Boat
  • For her
  • The Artist in Prison
  • In Memory
  • But your touch
  • The Poet
  • Photographs at her Wake
  • Mattress on the floor:
  • Lord of the world!
  • The door is fallen down
  • Door
  • The father was a carrier
  • Gray
  • Once I was girls and boys
  • The Eleventh Brother (2)
  • "Remote Objects of Intense Devotion"
  • The first thing
  • That I had treated you badly
  • Day & Night
  • All around the outside
  • Jesus Said
  • The Woman's Poem
  • Annunciation Poem
  • The Poet's Poem
  • The Teacher's Poem
  • Death Poem
  • The Afterlife Poem
  • Strange Lights
  • Hospital: far from home
  • Hospital: At last
  • Hospital: strange lights
  • Hospital: It was euphoria
  • Hospital: Scraps
  • A Bowl Of Milk
  • The Look
  • I wanted to be sure to reach you
  • When she told me
  • This Side
  • His White Jade Eggs
  • I was lying there
  • The Harrowing
  • From the Questions of Bhanu Kapil
  • Where did you come from/how did you arrive?
  • What is the shape of your body?
  • What do you remember about the earth?
  • What are the consequences of silence?
  • How will you/have you prepare(d) for your death?
  • Maria Gravida, Mary Expectant
  • Maria Gravida
  • Eye of water
  • Moose and calf
  • To my soul (2)
  • The Rose
  • Break the Glass (2010)
  • In prison
  • The whitewashed walls
  • The Leopard
  • Even all night long
  • I was working
  • "As with rosy steps the morn"
  • Dear Family,
  • Canoe
  • The Japanese garden
  • Ghost Elephants
  • On a Passenger Ferry
  • Then Abraham
  • Traveler
  • Coyote
  • Hawkins Stable
  • Who watches
  • Time is matter here
  • Earth and the Librarian
  • Her car
  • The World inside This One
  • Poet
  • (Two were seen leaving.)
  • The treeless hill
  • The just-born rabbits
  • The valley
  • On the bus
  • The branches
  • Red cloth
  • Don't silence yourself, No te Calles
  • Eurydice who guides
  • If a Person Visits Someone in a Dream, in Some Cultures the Dreamer Thanks Them
  • I dropped a plate
  • Desert Prison
  • You ask,
  • The Young Mother
  • I thought It's time
  • On the CD, in the rainstorm
  • Old love, I want to phone you
  • Diana
  • The older man among us
  • He Disappeared into Complete Silence
  • I am fain a page in the court of space
  • Lucy
  • Shirt in Heaven (2015)
  • Luna Moth
  • Luna Moth
  • A Child's Drawing, 1941
  • 1943: The Vision
  • Forest, Stars
  • Her last year
  • God of rooms
  • Hold the finch
  • 1945
  • For love,
  • Shirt in Heaven
  • There's nothing when
  • Peace to bad waters
  • Bardo
  • w. 13th Street
  • Open
  • A leaf, a shadow-hand
  • You rope that pulls them where they do not go
  • The helicopter,
  • When I lost my courage
  • His hand takes
  • Bury your money
  • Poem with endwords by Reginald Shepherd
  • She will be
  • Friend
  • [The ship] is slowly giving up her sentient life, I cannot write about it.
  • Hospice
  • Isn't there something
  • Down on the street
  • Both you & he
  • My words to you
  • I'm going to sleep
  • I'd get you a glass of champagne
  • We turn in dream
  • Are all the things
  • You're gone
  • Then
  • You Speak
  • Threshold
  • Could it be heat?
  • The Window:
  • The Door:
  • Bellini, Saint Francis
  • In the Famine Museum
  • Friend,
  • Great-grandmother,
  • Then had we well put to, without form, without text
  • Note in winter
  • Ten Degrees
  • When I woke up, out time
  • When I woke up, my friend
  • Self-portrait, Rembrandt, 1658
  • Song
  • Icebergs, Ilulissat
  • Notes
  • Acknowledgments
  • Index of Titles
  • Index of First Lines
  • About the Author
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

This resonant and comprehensive retrospective of Valentine (Shirt in Heaven), who died in 2020, celebrates the poet's visceral, spiritual, and uncanny writing. There is solace to be found in Valentine's language, which refuses the explicit, instead welcoming readers to take refuge in the indefinable aspects of experience. The mysterious poems carry an emotional poignancy, with grief embodied through spectral manifestations: "Five or six times you have come by/ the window; as if I'd been on a bus// sleeping through the Northwest, waking up,/ seeing old villages pass in your face." With exactitude, she describes the unsettling weight of night, "the dark is/ smiling, wanting their smile, their faces for its own." Vitality is redefined through a visceral, textured lexicon: "some sweet core,/ under, over gravity,/ some white shore... laugh sore tooth/ sucked warm, sweet; sweet wine// running cool through new/ dry shrewd turnings of my soul,/ opening veins... wings beating// like words against my eyes." Later poems were crafted while Valentine was battling Alzheimer's, making the collection a source of inspiration both for its author's fortitude and her innate virtuosity. Valentine's poems evoke the liminality and wonder overlooked in everyday life. (Apr.)

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