Warehouse Reading with Jean Valentine

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DATE : Wed, 25 Jan 2006 15:58:09 -0400
Entered in Database : 2006-01-25 19:58:09
length : 16522293
Link to the Show / Show Notes

Jean Valentine Introduction by Sandra Simonds This from the second poem she read this evening, "Listening": My whole life I was swimming listening Beside the daylight world like a dolphin beside a boat These two lines, which begin the poem, limn what it is she does--what we all do when we really go about the business of being writers. She is a careful listener, and crafts such small, finely-wrought poems that Pound's lines to Whitman come to mind, "It was you that broke the new wood, Now is a time for carving." In Jean Valentine's case she carves until the essence of what's being described comes to light. She's a master carpenter. A Giacometti. She is, in the end, a poet with such a fine ear that one can learn quite a lot. As she says at the end of "Listening": But I was made for this listening: "Lightness wouldn't last if it wasn't used up on the lyre."

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