The River at Wolf

by Jean Valentine

"Jean Valentine has written a visionary book. If it is built with the brick and wood of this world, the light that pours through its windows is searing, healing."—Marie Howe

Genres: Poetry

72 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1992

About the author

Jean Valentine (born April 27, 1934) is an American poet, and currently the New York State Poet (2008–2010). Her poetry collection, Door in the Mountain: New and Collected Poems, 1965–2003, was awarded the 2004 National Book Award for Poetry.

Her most recent book Break the Glass (Copper Canyon Press, 2010) was a finalist for the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Her first book, Dream Barker, won the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition in 1965. She has published poems widely in literary journals and magazines, including The New Yorker, and Harper's Magazine, and The American Poetry Review. Valentine was one of five poets including Charles Wright, Russell Edson, James Tate and Louise Gluck, whose work Lee Upton considered critically in The Muse of Abandonment: Origin, Identity, Mastery in Five American Poets (Bucknell University Press, 1998). She has held residencies from Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, Ucross, and the Lannan foundation, among others.

She was born in Chicago, USA, received bachelor of arts and a master of arts degrees at Radcliffe College, and has lived most of her life in New York City. She has taught with the Graduate Writing Program at New York University, at Columbia University, at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan, and at Sarah Lawrence College. She is a faculty member at the Vermont College of Fine Arts. She was married to the late American historian James Chace from 1957–1968, and they have two daughters, Sarah and Rebecca.

Reviews

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

Contains my favorite poem, "The River at Wolf."

[Stephen Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Title poem is great, had to go digging after that.

[Catherine]

poetry

[Kat Dixon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jean Valentine is easy one of the all time greats. Favorites here include "X," "The Summer Was Not Long Enough," "Ikon," "The Year of the Snake," "Night Lake," "The River at Wolf," "The Ring," "Barrie's Dream, the Wild Geese," "Fox Glacier," "The Morning of My Mother's Death," "Death Asphodel," and "At the Door."

[Carrie Cantalupo-Sharp · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful little treasure

[Leslie · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars

[Brook · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is / true desire, it lets you be.

[J · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bud

Christmas night, my father said, “Jean,
you are so disloyal.” But Bud said,
“No. Ethereal. Ethereal, but my friend.
And I, I got my prayer answered:
I died with my life around me.”


Still Life, for Matisse

Light
old leaf spine
fish spine bone
green under-the-
ocean light
big gold fish my
new little father
only a boy
breathing on the window
COME ON OUT
you carry me I carry you
light wave after wave
swim cockatoo
green, blue.


The First Angel

Fat slippery angels,
two by two,
carrying sheaves of straw
to the graveyard,
leaning sheaves of straw
on the gravestones,
straw on the frost stones.

God’s hands trembled when he
touched my head,
we are so much in love:
the new moon holding the old moon in her arms.

The first angel said, Write down this:
It is time to leave your past life, leave your plumb-line, your trowel,
your layers of habitation, your perfect finds-tray.

*

[Malini Gandhi · Rating 5 out of 5]

SO GOOD
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!