[.ca] Home Deep Blue (ISBN 0914086812)

Important and Excellent:
Home. Deep. Blue is the broadest perspective in one book that one can get of Valentine's work. No one is writing the way she writes. The narrative of the poem collides with the sacred nature of the word which exists without context--Jean's work exists in space the way Hofmann's paintings do, or Calder's sculptures: the tension of meaning versus the heart's wild urges. I strongly recommend this book as a beginning to understanding the world of Jean Valentine. Her poetic ancestors are Emily Dickinson, Amy Lowell, those who follow her Marie Howe, Mary Jo Bang, others. She is truly a secret genius of the living age.