Home Deep Blue: New and Selected Poems

by Jean Valentine

Eighteen new poems extend the trajectory of Jean Valentine’s work. Included are selections from her four previous Dream Barker, Pilgrims, Ordinary Things , and The Messenger . Her themes of pilgrimage, time, and human connection are revealed in intense meditations.

Genres: Poetry

79 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1988

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

[CARA ARMSTRONG · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jean Valentine’s poetry has engaged me for over 25 years. I read Home, Deep, Blue for the first time when I was studying architecture in graduate school, and maybe that’s why I am interested in her poetry’s structure and spacing as much as I am in her word choice and ability to turn a lyric line. When I worked at Fallingwater, I experienced daily how an architect like Frank Lloyd Wright could use something as seemingly simple as sunlight to choreograph circulation through a building and as I read and reread Valentine’s work, I have come to understand her use of spacing in a similar manner. She seems to me use spacing to design with light and to give us entry into her poetry. Once we have entered that world, we are guided by genius and joy to explore new realities, different dreams, and our very selves.

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

The comparison of Valentine's work to origami is apt. Origami is concerned with topology, and Valentine's folded experiences often enforce unsettling contiguous fields. The language is private and neighborly. Subject for let.

[Susan Davidoff · Rating 5 out of 5]

During this past year often unable to concentrate on longer works of fiction I turned back to old collections of poetry including those by Jean Valentine whom I had known in the 1980's. Since then I have never traveled without one of her volumes. Sadly, Jean died just a couple of days before the new year -- Her obituary is in today's NYT. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/07/ar...

[Nancy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Finish: 18.04.2024
Title: Home Deep Blue (1980)
Genre: 52 poems  (79 pg)
Rating: D


Conclusion
The only thing I will remember about Jean Valentine is that she kept me awake all night! 52 Poems by  Jean Valentine "Home Deep Blue"...they have an emotional tint referring to her private life, I do not know anything a/b her life so...the poems left  little impact on me.

Bad News:
Ms Valentine has been lauded for her poetry but I just do not get it. Ms Valentine never dodged emotion but she leaves out the details. The readers are forced to use their imagination. Too many of these "poems" are just spurts of words with no rhythm and little feeling.

Bad News
The tone of the poems is dream-like. The poet uses this mental state to forge for ideas. Unlike Sylvia Plath, who inspired Ms Valentine....Plath uses life experiences to create her narrative. That is what made her  poetry electrifying!


....I'll leave it this time to... Emily Dickinson:
"She has the facts but not the phosphorescence.”

[Lisha Adela · Rating 4 out of 5]

Timeless in its message this book had poems that deeply moved me. I read the book twice as there were great gaps between reads. Startling images, "standing there they began to grow skins dappled as trees, alone in the flare of their own selves." Then there were poems that come from personal connections;love poems, friend and alcoholic poems. The more recent poems from the "Messenger Section" were beautiful but to me unintelligible. I could understand individual stanzas and lines but not the meaning of the whole. I thought I was in some combination of Charles Simic and Jorie Grahm land for a minute. When my poetry becomes this obscure then I realize that I have edited the narrative so much in my head it makes sense to me but not to an outside reader. This however, is a personal preference, to not have to ponder hours on the meaning of a poem before its language daggers my being.

[Megan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Okay, so I haven't totally finished this book, but it's mostly because everytime I pick it up I find myself going back and rereading the poems I like again and again. Even the ones I thought I didn't like--there is something in the language that demands to be repeated. Especially "High School Boyfriend" and "Orpheus and Eurydice." Her complete poems might be next on my list.

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a good selected: balanced and meaty, with a great chunk of new work included. I wish my name was Jean Valentine so that I could make love to words the way she does.

[Catherine]

poetry