Quotes and Reviews

First Reviews

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Reviewed By: Reviewed By Amy Raines for Readers’ Favorite Through times that make one question life and its very being and thoughts of knowing love when we feel like the unlovable, Peter Valentyne has put these moments of emotion into clarity in his poetry in How To Live With What You Know. Moments of questioning God, Earth, love, prosperity, and joy in the face of life’s trials can hold much more than their supposed final decree. Does life have to remain sinister when certain events shake us to our core? Can we find purpose and meaning in the depths of life’s greatest questions? Can we cope with the unanswerable riddles without coming undone? With living comes wisdom but sometimes that wisdom is hidden; we have to look past simple events to find out what we really know about living. The poetry in How To Live With What You Know by Peter Valentyne will make the reader ask and answer questions that lead to more profound reasoning about life and existence. I love the straightforward way Valentyne writes his poems. There is no essential need for endless rhyme schemes or perfectly-sized stanzas when the words evoke deep and passionate emotions from the reader. I can honestly say Valentyne’s way of questioning the core of reality and existence is nothing like anything I have ever read. Among all of these brilliant poems, my absolute favorite is Everyday Life Of A Hand Mirror. The simple title betrays the deep resonating meaning of people getting so caught up in their own conceited view that they refuse to see what is happening in the world around them like zombies via reflection. I recommend How To Live With What You Know to anyone who loves poetry that resonates away from the cliche of rhyme and verse. I hope that Valentyne has many more collections of brilliant poetry to share with us in the future.

"A terrific performance piece!  As usual, it offers an abundance of food for thought by demanding that it be experienced on its own terms.  It contains phrases, such as “I speak in tongues; the language of consequence,”  that command deep consideration and personal availability to deeper understanding of poetry and of ones self."
                            ~David Garfield on The Poetry Defense
                                 Author of "A Player's Place"

"The Poetry Defense" is beautiful! Poetry, in it’s truest form...Gives the reader permission, with no dire consequences, to be free and alive. To experience healing, right along with life and death. The beauty of transcendence, spirituality, escapism, joy, sadness, aloneness, love and knowledge are all intertwined...Which, are as necessary to the soul as the air that we breath, the water that we drink and the food that we eat...But, are not always allowed, understood or neatly placed in the day to day world of morals, order and logic... Your poetry beckons and takes the reader on an infinite array of unapologetic journeys that differentiate between merely existing and truly living."
                                   ~Ward Nixon
                                                       Actor and Director

"A Valentyne poem is like a stone dropping straight down into a well, 

the splash, proof of their authority."