In this Book
- Door in the Mountain: New and Collected Poems, 1965-2003
- Book
- 2012
- Published by: Wesleyan University Press
- Series: Wesleyan Poetry Program
Winner of the National Book Award in Poetry (2004)
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.
Table of Contents
- Acknowledgments
- p. xvii
- New Poems
- Annunciation
- p. 3
- “She Sang”
- p. 6
- A wonderful boat
- p. 7
- I came to you
- p. 8
- So many secrets
- p. 10
- Eleventh Brother
- p. 10
- Once in the nights
- pp. 10-11
- Under the gold
- p. 11
- The Windows
- pp. 11-12
- October morning
- p. 13
- I heard my left hand
- p. 13
- In the evening
- p. 14
- We cut the new day
- pp. 14-15
- Occurrence of White
- p. 15
- How have I hurt you?
- pp. 15-16
- Do flies remember us
- p. 16
- You drew my head
- pp. 16-17
- Happiness (3)
- pp. 17-18
- I could never let go
- p. 19
- The Basket House
- pp. 19-20
- In your eyes
- p. 21
- Woman, Leaving
- p. 21
- Trim my hoofs
- pp. 21-22
- The Blue Dory, the Soul
- pp. 22-23
- To the Bardo
- pp. 24-25
- Rodney Dying (4)
- p. 25
- Door in the Mountain
- pp. 25-26
- Monarch butterfly
- p. 26
- My old body
- p. 26
- Inkwell daybreak
- p. 27
- The path between
- p. 27
- The Night Sea
- pp. 27-28
- One Foot in the Dark
- p. 28
- A weed green
- pp. 28-29
- Fears: Night Cabin
- p. 29
- The push or fly
- p. 31
- I would be
- pp. 31-32
- Do you remember?
- p. 32
- Advent Calendar
- pp. 32-33
- Your number is lifting off my hand
- pp. 34-35
- The Needle North
- p. 35
- The Passing
- p. 36
- In the Burning Air
- pp. 36-37
- Little house
- p. 37
- Dream Barker (1965)
- First Love
- p. 41
- For a Woman Dead at Thirty
- pp. 41-42
- Miles from Home
- pp. 42-43
- To Salter’s Point
- pp. 43-44
- Lines in Dejection
- pp. 44-45
- Sleep Drops Its Nets
- p. 45
- Sunset at Wellfleet
- p. 46
- Asleep over Lines from Willa Cather
- pp. 46-47
- Cambridge by Night
- pp. 47-48
- To a Friend
- pp. 48-49
- Sasha and the Poet
- pp. 50-51
- The Second Dream
- p. 51
- A Bride’s Hours
- pp. 51-52
- Afterbirth
- pp. 52-53
- Tired of London
- p. 54
- Cambridge, April 27, 1957
- pp. 54-55
- New York, April 27, 1962
- pp. 55-56
- September 1963
- pp. 56-57
- My Grandmother’s Watch
- pp. 59-60
- The Beast with Two Backs
- pp. 60-61
- The Little Flower
- pp. 61-70
- Dream Barker
- pp. 71-72
- To My Soul
- p. 72
- Pilgrims
- The Couples
- p. 75
- In the Museum
- pp. 77-78
- By the Boat Pond
- p. 78
- The Summer House
- pp. 78-79
- Her dream: the child
- pp. 80-81
- Orpheus and Eurydice
- pp. 81-82
- Separation
- pp. 83-85
- Thinking about Cain
- p. 85
- Broken-down Girl
- pp. 87-88
- Bin Dream, West Cottage East, D-11
- pp. 88-89
- Death House
- pp. 89-90
- Half an Hour
- pp. 91-92
- The Child Jung
- p. 93
- Coltrane, Syeeda’s Song Flute
- pp. 93-94
- Photograph of Delmore Schwartz
- pp. 94-95
- The Torn-down Building
- pp. 95-96
- Ordinary Things (1974)
- After Elegies
- p. 103
- ‘Autumn Day’
- pp. 103-104
- Anesthesia
- pp. 105-106
- After Elegies (2)
- p. 106
- 3 a.m. in New York
- p. 107
- Letter from a Country Room
- pp. 108-109
- A Child’s Death
- p. 109
- Revolution
- pp. 109-110
- Seeing L’Atalante
- p. 112
- Twenty Days’ Journey
- pp. 113-117
- This Minute
- pp. 118-120
- Couvre-Feu: after Paul Eluard
- pp. 120-121
- Fidelities
- pp. 121-123
- Susan’s Photograph
- pp. 123-124
- Outside the Frame
- p. 124
- Forces (2): Song
- p. 124
- The Messenger (1979)
- Dufy Postcard
- pp. 129-130
- Living Together
- pp. 131-132
- Prayer in Fever
- p. 135
- Silences: A Dream of Governments
- pp. 137-138
- After Elegies (3)
- p. 138
- The Messenger
- pp. 139-142
- Huub Oosterhuis: Orpheus
- pp. 143-145
- Osip Mandelstam: 394
- pp. 145-146
- December 21st
- p. 147
- What Happened
- pp. 149-151
- Turn (2): After Years
- pp. 151-152
- The Burden of Memory
- pp. 152-154
- February 9th
- pp. 154-156
- “Love and Work”: Freud Dying
- pp. 156-157
- Letter from a Stranger
- p. 157
- “Actuarial File”
- pp. 157-159
- Lines from a Story
- pp. 159-160
- March 21st
- pp. 160-162
- Home.Deep.Blue (1989)
- Willi, Home
- p. 167
- To Raphael, angel of happy meeting
- pp. 167-168
- Primitive Painting: Liberation Day
- pp. 168-169
- Awake, This Summer
- p. 169
- Mandelstam
- pp. 169-170
- The Drinker’s Wife Writes Back
- pp. 170-171
- Birthday Letter from South Carolina
- pp. 171-172
- The Counselor Retires, and Then He Dies
- pp. 172-173
- About Love
- pp. 176-177
- High School Boyfriend
- pp. 178-179
- Tonight I Can Write. . .
- p. 179
- The River at Wolf
- Spring and Its Flowers
- pp. 183-184
- Still Life, for Matisse
- pp. 184-185
- Still Life: in the Epidemic
- pp. 185-186
- The Year of the Snake
- pp. 187-188
- To a Young Poet
- pp. 189-190
- Alfred and the Abortion
- p. 191
- Redemption
- p. 192
- Seeing You
- pp. 192-193
- The Free Abandonment Blues
- pp. 193-194
- The First Station
- pp. 194-195
- Night Lake
- p. 195
- The Badlands Said
- p. 196
- The Missouri Speaks
- pp. 196-197
- The River at Wolf
- p. 197
- Fox Glacier
- p. 199
- Lindis Pass, Borage
- pp. 199-200
- After Consciousness of This Big Form
- pp. 200-201
- Everyone Was Drunk
- p. 201
- In Fear (1)
- pp. 201-202
- In Fear (2)
- p. 202
- In This Egg
- pp. 202-203
- The Under Voice
- p. 203
- Come Akhmatova
- pp. 203-204
- James Wright: in Memory
- p. 204
- Wish-Mother
- pp. 204-205
- At Cullen’s Island
- p. 205
- The Wisdom Gravy
- pp. 205-206
- The Morning of My Mother’s Death
- pp. 206-207
- Second Mother
- p. 208
- The Sea of Serenity
- pp. 208-209
- At My Mother’s Grave
- p. 210
- We Go Through Our Mother’s Things
- pp. 210-211
- Death Asphodel
- p. 211
- The First Angel
- p. 212
- At the Door
- pp. 212-213
- Alone, Alive
- pp. 213-214
- To Plath, to Sexton
- pp. 215-216
- The Power Table
- p. 216
- Growing Darkness, Growing Light (1997)
- Sick, Away from Home
- p. 219
- The Tractors
- pp. 221-222
- River Jordan
- p. 222
- Night Porch
- pp. 222-223
- World-light
- pp. 223-224
- Snow Family
- p. 224
- To the Black Madonna of Chartres
- pp. 224-225
- Mastectomy
- pp. 225-226
- Red for Blood
- pp. 226-227
- Yellow for Gold
- p. 227
- Green for the Land
- p. 228
- Black for the People
- pp. 228-229
- Long Irish Summer Day
- pp. 229-230
- Dog Skin Coat
- pp. 230-231
- Fellini in Purgatory
- p. 231
- Elegy for Jane Kenyon
- pp. 231-232
- Documentary: AIDS Support Group
- pp. 233-234
- A Bit of Rice
- pp. 234-235
- Rodney Dying
- p. 235
- Rodney Dying (2)
- p. 236
- The Baby Rabbits in the Garden
- pp. 236-237
- Mother and Child, Body and Soul
- pp. 237-238
- The Mother Dreams
- pp. 239-240
- Open Heart
- pp. 241-243
- The Cradle of the Real Life
- Elegy for Jane Kenyon (2)
- pp. 247-248
- Black Wolf
- p. 248
- Mother Bones
- pp. 248-249
- They lead me
- p. 249
- Your mouth “appeared to me”
- pp. 249-250
- Mare and Newborn Foal
- p. 250
- October Premonition
- p. 251
- Rodney Dying (3)
- pp. 251-252
- Running for a train
- p. 254
- The Welsh poet
- p. 255
- The Tower Roof
- p. 256
- For a Woman Dead at Thirty (2)
- pp. 256-257
- Little Map
- pp. 257-258
- The Drinker
- p. 258
- The Drinker (2)
- pp. 258-259
- Happiness (2): The I Ching
- pp. 259-260
- He leaves them
- p. 260
- Away from you
- pp. 260-261
- The Women’s Prison
- p. 263
- In the Public Library
- pp. 263-264
- Margaret, d. 1985
- p. 264
- At the Conference on Women in the Academy
- pp. 264-265
- The Orphanage Landing
- p. 265
- Reading the Mandelstams
- p. 265
- What God Said
- pp. 266-268
- The Church
- pp. 269-270
- The Locked Ward: O.T.
- pp. 270-271
- Single Mother, 1966
- pp. 271-272
- Abortion Child
- p. 272
- To Ireland
- pp. 272-273
- Index of Titles and First Lines
- pp. 277-285
- About the Author
- p. 287