Sunday, October 21, 2018

Jean Valentine's Poem MY WORDS to YOU Posted on MTA Poetry in Motion

You take the subway to get someplace quickly (& cheaply).  Spotted yesterday in the subway car was a short & sweet poem by Jean Valentine (b Chicago 1934) but a lifelong New Yorker.  Valentine has received the Nat'l Book Award for Poetry and been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry.  Ms. Valentine taught at NYU up until 2004.  Why is it that just a few words strung together in a lyrical fashion can possess such majesty?  MY WORDS to YOU is so tender and magical it warms your heart & transports your soul.

                            MY WORDS to YOU by Jean Valentine

My words to you are the stitches in a scarf
I don't want to finish.
Maybe it will come to be a blanket
to hold you here.

Love not gone anywhere.


Along the thread of human connection from other poems by Jean Valentine:

"Blessed are those who break off from separateness."  (Little Boat)

"Who gave me this wool sweater?
So it pleases you life, we won't go alone."  (Poem from the Russian)
         

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