Valentine was born in
Chicago,
Illinois, on April 27, 1934. Her father was a
Navy man. She received a Bachelor of Arts degree and a Master of Arts degree from
Radcliffe College of
Harvard University, and lived most of her life in
New York City, where she died on December 29, 2020. Her most recent book,
Shirt In Heaven, was published in 2015. Before that,
Break the Glass, published in 2010, was a finalist for the 2011
Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Valentine's first book,
Dream Barker (
Yale University Press, 1965), was chosen in 1964 for the
Yale Series of Younger Poets and won the competition the following year. She published poems widely in literary journals and magazines, including
The New Yorker, and ''Harper's Magazine,
and The American Poetry Review.
Valentine was one of five poets, including Charles Wright, Russell Edson, James Tate and Louise Glück, whose work Lee Upton considered critically in The Muse of Abandonment: Origin, Identity, Mastery in Five American Poets'' (Bucknell University Press, 1998). She held residencies from
Yaddo, the
MacDowell Colony,
Ucross, and the Lannan foundation, among others. She taught with the Graduate Writing Program at
New York University, at
Columbia University, at the
92nd Street Y in
Manhattan, and at
Sarah Lawrence College. She was a faculty member at the
Vermont College of Fine Arts. She was Distinguished Poet-in-Residence for
Drew University's MFA in Poetry & Poetry in Translation. She was married to the late American historian
James Chace from 1957 to 1968, and they are survived by two daughters, Sarah and
Rebecca. Valentine died in
Manhattan on December 29, 2020. ==Published works==