VALENTINE PLACE: Poems - Softcover

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Softcover

ISBN 10: 0684822792 ISBN 13: 9780684822792

Publisher: Scribner, 1996

A collection of more than forty poems probes every intimate angle, good and bad, of love, commitment, marriage, betrayal, divorce, and the "pleasures of pain and desire." Simultaneous.

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From Library Journal:

Lehman's (series editor of Best American Poetry) poems explore the idiosyncrasies of love and marriage, separation and divorce. Many of the poems possess a witty outlook and others push to the extreme of sarcasm; however, Lehman allows us to contribute our own definition of love. These poems reveal how "life is a public event," and we must confess to ourselves as well as to our friends and lovers that "love is a speechless joy/That lasts until it dies." After reading these poems, we realize "there's a shiver of mortality in the air." We should walk away from them, forlorn over our willingness to let down that which is most important. However, Lehman asserts that "ten years later he was still sleeping/With one woman while dreaming of another." Is there justice in keeping a faithful marriage when the resolve to faithfulness has long died? The author examines this question while allowing us to provide the answer. Recommended for poetry collections of larger public libraries.?Tim Gavin, Episcopal Acad., Merion, Pa.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist:

February is an appropriate month of publication for Lehman's third collection, for February has the hot thorn of Valentine's Day lodged in its otherwise cold paw, and Lehman is skilled at contemplating both the heat of love and the chill of betrayal. These poems proceed from marriage to divorce, touching the pathos and glory between them, and their characters are both forlorn and exuberant. In "Sexism," Lehman states that a woman's happiest moment comes when the key turns in the lock and her clumsy man comes in, so she need not sleep alone; for a man, the happiest moment occurs when he walks outside after sleeping with a woman and sees "the high August sky full of stars / And gets in his car and drives home." Lehman, well known as ongoing editor of the annual Best American Poetry, gives us a book that reveals him as an author possessed of a delicious wit, flawless observation, and a magnificent command of language. Elizabeth Millard

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