Lucy: A Poem (Quarternote Chapbook Series)

Lucy / your secret book / that you leaned over and wrote just in the dirt— / Not having to have an ending / Not having to last. . . .

And so begins Jean Valentine’s provocative new work, Lucy, a poem that pays homage to the three million-year-old skeleton of the earliest known hominid. With a deep sense of gratitude and profound longing, this poem celebrates the creative power of the female by introducing us to one of our oldest human ancestors. In a dreamlike and often fractured syntax that is vintage Valentine, Lucy, the “wildgood mother” of our species, can once again be heard.