As elliptical and demanding as Emily Dickinson Valentine consistently rewards the readerLibrary JournalIn her eleventh collectionhonored as a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in poetryJean Valentine characteristically weds a moral imperative to imaginative and linguistic leaps and bounds Whether writing elegies meditations on aging or an extended homage to Lucy the earliest known hominid the pareddown compactness of her tone and vision reveals a singular voice in American poetry As Adrienne Rich has said of Valentines work This is a poetry of the highest order because it lets us into spaces and meanings we couldnt approach in any other wayFrom If a Person Visits Someone in a Dream in Some Cultures the Dreamer Thanks ThemAt a hotel in another star The rooms were cold anddamp we were both at the desk at midnight asking ifthey had any heaters They had one heater You areill please you take it Thank you for visiting my dreamCan you breathe all rightBreak the glass shoutbreak the glass force the roombreak the thread Openthe music behind the glass Jean Valentine a former State Poet of New York earned a National Book Award the Wallace Stevens Award and the Shelley Memorial Prize She has taught at Sarah Lawrence New York University and Columbia University She lives in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of New York City