From Library Journal
This book, a wise selection from older work and a generous offering of new poems, should win Valentine the audience she deserves. Long admired by poets such as Auden, Bishop, and Lowell, she remains inexplicably neglected. Her poems are a rare pleasure: serious and graceful, never glib, testimony to the strength and beauty of the lyric as a music of words, not ideas. As elliptical and demanding as Emily Dickinson, Valentine consistently rewards the reader: "The pear tree buds shine like salt;/ the stretch of new-ploughed earth holds up/ five colors of brown to the strict sun--/ like an old woman's open hand, at rest." Reading her work aloud, a joy in itself, serves to dispel any obscurity. For anyone interested in lyric poetry.
- Kathleen Norris, Lemmon Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.