Jean Valentine

Jean Valentine has read for the O.B. Hardison Poetry Series on numerous occasions: April 18, 1983, December 12, 1983, December 12, 1989, December 10, 1990, and on December 8, 2003 for the Emily Dickinson Birthday Tribute.

Jean Valentine.

Since winning the Yale Younger Poets prize in 1965, Valentine has published eight collections of poetry, including The Cradle of the Real Life (2000), to high critical acclaim. Her spare, sharp-edged poems approach Dickinson’s in their risky line-breaks and cosmic ambition, but with an earthiness all their own: “I want, I want. / I want to become round like you there: like God,” she writes.

Click here to listen to Jean Valentine read Emily Dickinson’s “Safe in their alabaster chambers” and here to listen to her read her poem “Elegy for Jane Kenyon” at the Folger on December 8, 2003.

Visit her Poetry Foundation page for more information.