John Valentine
Coming April 2025
About the Book
Birth and being mark the poems in this second collection by philosopher John Valentine, who meditates on the nature of humanity and existence.
Each verse is a metaphysical musing, an inquiry without an “I” and a dialogue in silence.
Contemplating our ever-entwined virtues and vices, Birth Certificate dwells on the divine and tragic, the spirited and frail, to create an image of the ideal — an ephemeral mandala offering order amid “displacement in the sea of beings” — only to be swept away with the breath and water of time.
Articles and Interviews
John Valentine speaks about “The Heart of the Matter” on When the Moon Sings, September 21, 2024
John Valentine, “On the Trail of the Unicorn: Trying to Define Art,” ArtPulse, no date
About the Author
John Valentine has a Ph.D. in philosophy from Vanderbilt University and taught at various colleges and universities for forty-six years, including the University of Alabama in Birmingham, East Georgia State College in Swainsboro, and the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD). He retired from SCAD in 2022.
He is the author of Beginning Aesthetics: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Art as well as numerous articles in philosophy journals.
His poetry has been published in the books Birth Certificate and The Heart of the Matter, the chapbook Close to the Fallen, and The Sewanee Review, International Poetry Review, The Midwest Quarterly, Mudlark: An Electronic Journal of Poetry & Poetics, Southern Poetry Review, Snake Nation Review, and others.
His poems attempt to capture moments of sudden illumination that reveal the interconnectivity of all beings. He has been influenced in this regard by Zen Buddhism and the literature of existentialism and also by William Blake’s famous lines from “Auguries of Innocence”:
To see a World in a Grain of Sand
William Blake
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour . . .
Poetry is a dance between the universal and the singular, the one and the many. When we can suddenly
Books by John Valentine
