Break the Glass - Jean Valentine

n nAs elliptical and demanding as Emily Dickinson, Valentine consistently rewards the reader.--Library Journaln nIn her eleventh collection--honored as a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in poetry--Jean Valentine characteristically weds a moral imperative to imaginative and linguistic leaps and bounds. Whether writing elegies, meditations on aging, or an extended homage to Lucy, the earliest known hominid, the pared-down compactness of her tone and vision reveals a singular voice in American poetry. As Adrienne Rich has said of Valentine's work, This is a poetry of the highest order, because it lets us into spaces and meanings we couldn't approach in any other way.n nFrom If a Person Visits Someone in a Dream, in Some Cultures the Dreamer Thanks Them: n nAt a hotel in another star.

The rooms were cold and ndamp, we were both at the desk at midnight asking if nthey had any heaters. They had one heater. You are nill, please you take it.

Thank you for visiting my dream.n n* nCan you breathe all right? nBreak the glass shout nbreak the glass force the room nbreak the thread Open nthe music behind the glass . .

. n nJean Valentine, a former State Poet of New York, earned a National Book Award, the Wallace Stevens Award, and the Shelley Memorial Prize. She has taught at Sarah Lawrence, New York University, and Columbia University.

She lives in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of New York City.n n