More can be learned about the writing and experience of poetry from Jean Valentine's work than from any other poet of her generation, which is one of the most remarkable America has produced. And unlike any poet of her generation she has never published a weak poem--apparently she never writes a poem unless it is to record what Roethke called a genuine upwelling of the unconscious, a wordless perception, or one beyond words; these experiences are expressed with a skill and restraint which approach the miraculous.

What's most noticed about Valentine's work is its strangeness. Robert Hass writes, "...every time some shape of...recognition rises up in you as a familiar emotion, the poem veers off..." Adrienne Rich writes, "Looking into a Jean Valentine poem is like looking into a lake." The words of the poems in this book are ghostly--they are representations of the real things--which, like the objects in Plato's cave seem at the corner of our vision, vanish when we turn to look.

The truths of these poems aren't in the words, but in the heart of meaning loosely housed by the words. Valentine gently cloaks each "poem" in these delicate and quiet visions.

Like the best sacred books one could finish the book in a single sitting without any idea of what has "happened" in the poems--or what has happened to oneself upon the reading. Like the best sacred books, this book's value is in suspending our rational thought, our desire for things to match up, whether syntactically or morally--and instead give ourselves over to the magic of the book, to enter its dream-world, the "luminous room" Valentine wrote about in an earlier book.

As in a dream, we surrender our senses. We do not need great courage to do this. Jean Valentine will take care of us.

This book is clearly the book of a poet who has decades of writing and life experience behind her. It is too easy to say the book is "full." In fact, I think it is not that at all. The book empties itself--it exists in a world of half-light, exists in a moment of filling--it is an active book, it thrashes, it breathes, it is alive.

This is a happy little book of short stories about romance on Valentine's Day. I recommend this for teenage girls that like short, sweet romances. It'll put you in a good and hopeful mood.

Jean Valentine is one of the greatest and most under appreciated poets of our time. She has won countless awards for her writing, which dares to subtly explore the dreamscape and the spirit. Her poems are exact and beautiful. This book will force you to think and inspire you to write.

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.

You are reading the confessions of a reformed cynic. This book has a love story in it's purest form, without all the junk that sometimes clouds things. In it you see what true Love is, and it makes you hope. These are not the ramblings of some young love-sick girl, these are the words of someone who had lost faith in real, time-honored, make-it-through-at-any-cost love....this book restored that faith. A Thank you to Mr. Pratt for a novel that touched my heart.

In the Last Valentine you can relate to Caroline Thomas as she is going on with life while not knowing if her husband Neil is alive or not. He is in the Air Force and he has to go to war during World War II. This book was very interesting if you want to know what an Air Force pilot went through during the war. He was shot down during an air raid and was taken in by the Phillipino guerillas. The nursed him back to health the best they could. He fought with them against the Japs. He died fighting with them. His body was returned home fifty years after he left for the war. His wife Caroline then knew he was home safe and she could pass on and be with him forever in eternity.

i've read good books before, but this one is at the top of my list. it's a love story that occurs during world war II and the love endores through the end. many surprises, especially in the end. I was in tears as i was reading this book. very few books ending can do that for me.