Door in the Mountain: New and Collected Poems, 1965-2003

by Jean Valentine

Since the 1965 publication of her first book, Dream Barker, selected for the Yale Younger Poets Award, Jean Valentine has published eight collections of poetry to critical acclaim. Spare and intensely-felt, Valentine's poems present experience as only imperfectly graspable. This volume gathers together all of Valentine's published poems and includes a new collection, Door in the Mountain.

Valentine's poetry is as recognizable as the slant truth of a dream. She is a brave, unshirking poet who speaks with fire on the great subjects—love, and death, and the soul. Her images—strange, canny visions of the unknown self—clang with the authenticity of real experience. This is an urgent art that wants to heal what it touches, a poetry that wants to tell, intimately, the whole life.

Genres: Poetry, The United States Of America

308 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

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

[s.penkevich [hiatus-will return-miss you all] · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘You may be dead but
Don’t stop loving me.’

To enter the works of Jean Valentine is like slipping softly into a dream and having been overcome by it before you realize it has even taken hold of you. Door in the Mountain, a new and selected poems collection of her work between 1965-2003, is an incredible voyage through the former New York State Poet’s impressive worlds of words. There is a hushed reverence to her poetry, which moves with incredible calm and grace and then strike with incredible sharpness, all within an very dreamlike cadence and overall vibe. Often quite short, her poems avoid excess and are highly calibrated and precise, her words delivered as if on the edge of a knife. Door in the Moutain, titled from one of her most well-loved poems, is a dreamy, poetic feast and gorgeous testimony of her amazing vision.

Door in the Mountain

Never ran this hard through the valley
never ate so many stars

I was carrying a dead deer
tied on to my neck and shoulders

deer legs hanging in front of me
heavy on my chest

People are not wanting
to let me in

Door in the mountain
let me in

Valentine, who passed in 2021, had a marvelous career having been named the New York State Poet Laureate in 2008, winning the National Book Award in 2004 (for this very collection), was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, taught a graduate program at Columbia and was a Distinguished Poet-in-Residence at Drew’s University. Her first collection of poetry, Dream Barker and Other Poems, won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award in 1965 and she went on to publish more than a dozen volumes during her lifetime as well as translations of Osip Mandelstam and Marina Tsvetaeva, publishing Dark Elderberry Branch: Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva as a project along with another favorite poet of mine, Ilya Kaminsky. She often cited Sylvia Plath as a huge inspiration to the start of her writing career, though another major influence was her dreams, something rather detectable the the overall feel of her works. She once went on record saying ‘My dreams were very important to me right in the beginning. I had a teacher in college who said ‘You could write from your dreams’ and that was like being given a bag full of gold.’ I really love the dreamlike quality of her works, though I find she works best in her shorter poems. Not that the long ones are lacking but it is highly impressive how much emotional weight she can put in just a few lines, such as a personal favorite, My Words to You:

My words to you are the stitches in a scarf
I don’t want to finish
maybe it will come to be a blanket
or a net to hold you here

love not gone anywhere

Valentine is often very soothing, being able to deal with both the personal and the political with ease and a calm vision. Though what is there to say that could ever match what the poet Adrienne Rich wrote of her works:

’Looking into a Jean Valentine poem is like looking into a lake: you can see your own outline, and the shapes of the upper world, reflected among rocks, underwater life, glint of lost bottles, drifted leaves. The known and familiar become one with the mysterious and half-wild, at the place where consciousness and the subliminal meet. This is a poetry of the highest order, because it lets us into spaces and meanings we couldn’t approach in any other way.’

This sums Valentine up so well. She’s a poet who was able to bring her entire being into a poem, having told her students that the poetry she likes best is when it is evident it is written by ‘someone who is just going to go to the absolute end of their rope for this thing.’ In such a short amount of space, Valentine is always able to make words come so alive.

( from Sanctuary)

Not listening. Now. Not watching. Safe inside my own skin.
To die, not having listened. Not having asked ... To have scattered
life.


Yes I know: the thread you have to keep finding, over again, to
follow it back to life; I know. Impossible, sometimes.

Door in the Mountain is a wonderful way to introduce yourself to this fantastic poet. It is, as one would expect, a great offering of the most notable poems from the duration of her career, poems that feel so very personal and intimate yet have an incredible universality to them. She is also quite accessible, making them poems that are easy and welcoming to enter, but the layers of feeling and her extraordinary way with words will have you wanting to nestle within the poems for a long time, coming back time and time again. An amazing poet and an amazing collection.

4.5/5

For Love

you leapt sometimes
you walked away sometimes

that time on the phone you
couldn’t get your breath
I leapt but couldn’t get to you

I caught the brow that bid the dead
I caught the bough that hid

I’m, you know, still here,
tulip, resin, temporary—

[Dawn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ahhhhhh. Everybody, all at once, with me: ahhhhhh. What a pleasure it is to read poems that don't want anything but to be honest. What a releif.

[Cooper Renner · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good rule of thumb for Valentine seems to be length: if the poem is less than about a dozen lines, there's a good chance it will be really sharp and fine and memorable. If it's longer, not much hope. She is an unusual poet who developed and developed and got better and better. If one looks at only the "new poems" in this collection, and the poems from the last book that preceded it, then the collection is quite strong. But the early books are too much of their time, too much standard issue. There are good poems scattered in the earlier books, but most of the poems are much too long and talky and "explicable". The less Valentine "means," the better she is.

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jean Valentine is amazing, on the page, in person - you name it. I am not worthy.

[Timothy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Even better than milk and cookies. In fact, I think Jean Valentine IS milk and cookies. Personified. In the form of an angel. Disguised as a human. Who tastes like milk and cookies.

[Jana · Rating 5 out of 5]

i went to a poetry reading of hers and instantly adored her. i want to be like ms. valentine when i'm older, thoughtful with a quiet but poignant sense of humor and exuding wisdom. at least, that's the impression i got :) love reading her.
(also, for those anne readers, she reminded me of miss lavendar in book 4).

[Judy · Rating 5 out of 5]

We received this book in May 2011, and I could not put it down. The selections cover a longish stretch of time, and we can see the changes in the poet's viewpoint and also the view itself. Her images are arresting, and I suggest reading them aloud, whether anyone is listening or not. When I heard them read, my experience was unlike that of reading them silently to myself.

[Jenni · Rating 4 out of 5]

Valentine is one of my favorite living poets. Very spare and intimate lyrics. My favorite in this book: AMERICAN RIVER SKY ALCOHOL FATHER.

[Betta · Rating 5 out of 5]

gorgeous.

[Yvette · Rating 5 out of 5]

Shapeshifting is mandatory as a poet

[Dylan Harbison · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've been reading this on and off all summer. She was a master of craft.. I can't believe it took me so long to read her and I'm glad that I finally did. I will be revisiting some of these poems for the rest of my life. This collection contains 9 of her books, everything up until 2003. My personal favorites are The River at Wolf (freaking masterpiece, if you're going to read anything by her, read this) and Dream Barker (haunting, mesmerizing). Her work is equal parts darkness and light, quiet and loud.

"Everyone else will leave you, I will never leave you, fugitive"

<3

[Amie Whittemore · Rating 3 out of 5]

I always have a hard time with new/selected/collected books. I do think it's a nice way to taste a poet's oeuvre, but it can come to feel a bit like a slog. Fortunately, Valentine's poems are quite short, overall. It was also interesting to see the collection open with newer work, rather than end with it.

My favorite poems come from her middle period, Home.Deep.Blue and The River at Wolf, so I intend to seek out those collections and read them as a whole.

I like how her poems seem to be informed by dreams/dreamscapes, and conversation, relatonships. There's a humbleness in these poems, a casual but astute watchfulness. Lyrical, into the moment. Not ornate, but careful, no excess. Certainly moments of amazing metaphor and simile. Each poem had a sparkle to it, even if, reading so many, the sparkles began to blur.

[Gary McDowell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not sure what I think of this so far. For Olsen's class we are reading the New Poems and the latest book, The Cradle of the Real Life. I don't really like them. It's hard for me to get invested in her short poems. I like short poems. I love Graham Foust and Merwin's short lyrics. The earlier stuff, like The Messenger and even her first book, Dream Barker, however, are enthralling. Maybe I can bring those books up in class? I don't know if I'll have time to read them as deeply as I'd like by Wednesday though.... I hate time.

She's amazing. I just don't think I'll return to this book as often as I turn to other writers.

[Kent · Rating 4 out of 5]

Valentine's method of investigating a drama, using multiple lyrical perspective, is compelling. I find that I want more, and she gives less with each succeeding book. Dream Barker is so good it's like an institution in and of itself. But then the material gets whittled back. I guess I'm just one of those spoiled brat readers.

[Lynn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Me chingo mi madre

[Christina Olivares · Rating 5 out of 5]

have studied under jean twice and she is marvelous. her poems are all play and insight, small diamonds. i love them.

[Janice Parker · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am always a bit sad to be introduced to brilliant poets only upon their death, but I would be even more sad to have not discovered Jean Valentine's poetry at all. This collection is extraordinary.

[Liisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant. The later, more spare, poems were my favourites.


You, poem
the string I followed blind
to leaf by thick green leaf
to your stem
milky
poem without words
world electric with you
( - "Poetry")


So what use was poetry
to a white empty house?

Wolf, swan, hare,
in by the fire.

And when your tree
crashed through your house,

what use then
was all your power?

It was the use of you.
It was the flower.
(- "To Plath, to Sexton")

[Vincent Scarpa · Rating 4 out of 5]

“The reins inside my head that hold my hope
When it leaps, in waking life, fall slack,
And, beyond the world of falling things,
With flesh like air, and an assumed agreement
Between my body and the way it takes,
I walk aimlessly by a green and perfect river.” — “Asleep over Lines from Willa Cather”

[Jaden Power · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's an incredible mystery to have finished this book, it has followed me through so many passages of times, moving houses, stages that I can not even begin to explain here. Valentine's work is just breathless, extraordinary. I really admire the way she writes and crafts words together, how she leaves the mystery in it while not depleting the beauty.

[Julia Bucci · Rating 5 out of 5]

"saying again there is a last
even of last times

I wake up with one hand holding hard to the other hand.
My head rests on oilcloth. A quiet voice laughs, and says again,

--You were going to go without me?
That was always your story."

[t.a. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Despite her being one of my favourite poets it's weird to read a collection of someone's work who insisted so much on sparsity... like it dilutes the work a bit imo and the selection feels unfocused 3 still glad I own it for reference though!

[christine · Rating 5 out of 5]

My first foray into this poet's work will definitely not be my last. Tight lines that read first as loosely associative, but upon deeper reading, hold together with a masterful tension.

[Christian Yeo · Rating 5 out of 5]

those new poems are ridiculous. she might be one of the best to have ever done it.

[Will]

This was featured in a podcast of Poetry Off the Shelf (2009-04-27). It's a sprawling collection of poems, but from the little I heard, it sounds really interesting.

[Krista · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not bad, but I expected more down-to-earth dazzle.

[Kate]

WHAT FRESH HEAVEN IS THIS