On Zoom.

“love not gone anywhere”: Writing in Dialogue with Jean Valentine 

Jean Valentine (1934–2020) was/is one of the great contemporary US poets. Intensely concise and mysterious yet never overly abstract nor austere in the sense of emotionally withholding, Valentine’s work continues to influence—and more importantly, to move readers and writers deeply. In this generative workshop, we’ll read and discuss and write in response to the entirety of the second section of Valentine’s last book, Shirt in Heaven (Copper Canyon, 2015). This section, “Friend,” was originally published as a chapbook by Albion Books and is an extended elegy as well as an ode to friendship, a meditation on memory, dreams, a range of afterlives, and love. How does love persist? Why does it? Is love, as Dickinson puts it, at once "Posterior — to Death —“ and the “Initial of Creation”? What can Valentine’s uncompromising craft show us about what is fleeting, what is lasting, all that gleams in between? These, among other questions large and small, will animate our conversation and our experimentation. All readings will be provided via Google doc and PDF. Participants can expect to generate at least three new drafts. No prior knowledge of Valentine’s work is required here. Please come prepared to be wildly curious, to begin (again and again) in total wonder, and to go, as Valentine described it, “to the end of [your] rope for this thing.”