Pat Valdata Featured Poet

Pat Valdata

Mar 01, 2016

March is National Women's Month and Pat Valdata helps us to honor women who are extraordinary, and who broke through glass ceilings to reach high into the sky. -Grace Cavalieri

Pat Valdata is an award-winning poet and fiction writer with an MFA in writing from Goddard College. In 2015 she received a Raveel Grant toward a two-week residency at the Dickinson House in Olsene, Belgium, which she attended in September 2015. Valdata has twice received Individual Artist Awards from the Maryland State Arts Council. In 2013 she was awarded a grant from the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation for a residency at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Thanks to this grant and residency, she completed the manuscript for a book of poetry that was awarded the 2015 Donald Justice Prize. Her award-winning manuscript, Where No Man Can Touch, was published in June 2015.

Her other book publications are the poetry book Inherent Vice, published by Pecan Grove Press in 2011, the same publisher that printed her poetry chapbook Looking for Bivalve, which was a contest finalist in 2002; the novel Crosswind, published in 1997 by Wind Canyon Books; and the novel The Other Sister, published by Plainview Press in 2008, which won a gold medal from the Hungarian Association’s Árpád Academy. Valdata’s work has appeared in literary magazines including Little Patuxent Review and Passager, and the anthology Challenges for the Delusional (Jane Street Press 2012).

A native of New Jersey, Valdata lives in Elkton, Maryland. She is an adjunct associate professor at the University of Maryland University College (UMUC), where she teaches writing and literature in online and hybrid formats. She is a sailplane pilot and founding member of the Women Soaring Pilots Association.

Selected poems from Where No Man Can Touch, published in 2015 by the West Chester University Poetry Center and winner of the 2015 Donald Justice Poetry Prize

The Donald Justice Prize is sponsored by the Iris N. Spencer Poetry Awards at West Chester University. The Iris N. Spencer Poetry Awards were created in 2005 through the generosity of Kean Spencer, a successful businessman and benefactor of the arts. The awards honor his mother, Iris N. Spencer, and recognize the important role of the arts and letters in American life. Under the auspices of the Iris N. Spencer Poetry Awards, the Donald Justice Prize was created as a national poetry award in memory of acclaimed poet Donald Justice.

La Prima Donna

Thérèse Peltier (1873–1826), first woman to solo an airplane,
September 1908

I flew two hundred meters in Turin—

Not high, not fast, but first.

I flew an aeroplane, no zeppelin.

I flew two hundred meters in Turin.

I’m being called a heroine

In papers sold by Mr. Hearst:

I flew two hundred meters in Turin—

Not high, not fast, but first!

The Human Arrow

Hélène Dutrieu (1877–1961), first woman to carry a passenger, 1910;
first woman to win an air race, 1911;
first woman to pilot a seaplane, 1912

I wear no corset when I fly,

Perform motorcycle stunts, or race

Cars. I’m the first woman to place

First in a flying contest, but I

Am not famous for that. Why?

Newspapers claim I’m a disgrace:

I wear no corset.

Sometimes I want to slap the face

Of reporters who love to vilify

Me. I’ve won the Coupe Femina, I cry!

What endears me to the Belgian populace?

I wear no corset.

Plans

Bessie Coleman (1892–1926), first African American woman pilot,
15 June 1921

White men in Waxahachie plain won’t

Teach me, nor any men North or South.

Being female, and black, they say, I can’t

Learn such things. But my full-lipped mouth

Loves aileron, chandelle, empennage.

So while I file the flapper’s smoke-stained nails,

I practice aerodrome and fuselage

And save my tips. One day, I’ll do a tail-

Slide overseas, and split-S slow roll where

La vie est belle; instructors, color-blind.

Then, when I’ve joined those masters of the air,

I’ll glide beneath the cloud base unconfined,

Make my way back home, barnstorm the sky,

And watch the white folk pay to see me fly.

Originally published in Rhymes for Adults, ed. Mary Alexandra Agner, Virginia Reals Press, 2006.

Albatross

Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1906–2001), first woman in United States to receive a
first-class glider license,
29 January 1930

Above the pines, supported by the air

Like the gulls over the sea, whirling.

With them I share six minutes of solitude, each

Where

No man can touch,

No shout can reach.

Savoring the sense of altitude to spare

I turn north from Mount Soledad, hearing

Nothing but the seagulls’ raucous screech

Where

No man can touch,

No shout can reach.

Like them, I bank upon a pair

Of long, thin wings while gliding

In this Albatross just a mile from the beach,

Where

No man can touch,

No shout can reach.

Later, when sitting in the courtroom’s glare,

Or hounded by the ever-present press,

I’ll close my eyes to block discordant speech,

And for perhaps six minutes will again be here,

Where

No man can touch,

No shout can reach.

Refrain quoted from “Even,” in The Unicorn and Other Poems, Anne Morrow Lindbergh.

Zoom

Ann Baumgartner Carl (1918–2008), first American woman to test fly a jet aircraft,
14 October 1944

She’s dancer-sleek, but without a prop looks

Almost naked, a ballerina minus her tulle.

She looks light as a dancer, too, with dual

Wing-mounted air intake scoops.

There’s an acrid smell of jet fuel until I close

The canopy. Taxi is easy, takeoff so smooth it’s eerie.

I hear the turbine’s whine but all the roar’s behind me.

Throttle up, pull back, wow, she sure goes!

In moments we’re at 35,000 feet.

Even throttled back, she’s fast when she rolls;

With such power, she responds well to the controls.

In much too short a time my tests are complete.

I could fly this sweetheart all day. Check off one more:

WASPs have flown every plane in the Army Air Corps.

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