Jean Valentine, Abridged
By C. D. Wright
Valentine's palette is mostly grey. Next comes blue (borage, cobalt, silk, robe,
egg). Then white. Some inherent greens. But she draws most often from the
greyer end of the grey scale. It could be manifest in a postmortem jaw, dusty glass,
a sky, one degree Fahrenheit, a lone sock under a sickbed; the water is grey, and
the long wall where one exits a car. Grey is the intermediate state she inhabits with
no apparent effort. In the grey space, the bardo, the spirit starts to find shape, to
find internal structure.
Copyright Credit: C. D. Wright, "Jean Valentine, Abridged" from The Poet, the Lion, Talking Pictures, El Farolito, a Wedding in St. Roch, the Big Box Store, the Warp in the Mirror, Spring, Midnights, Fire & All. Copyright © 2016 by C. D. Wright. Reprinted by permission of Copper Canyon Press, www.coppercanyonpress.org.
Source: The Poet, the Lion, Talking Pictures, El Farolito, a Wedding in St. Roch, the Big Box Store, the Warp in the Mirror, Spring, Midnights, Fire & All (Copper Canyon Press, 2016)