Jean Valentine

I started by reading the poem "Waiting", here it is:

Waiting

Then I clicked on the name 'Jean Valentine', just above the poem's title, and found an essay:

Essay

Quote1 from the essay:

She was with Dr. Shea for ten years. "He said, 'For you, you should write every day, including Christmas!'" Valentine laughs. "And that really changed my life and it changed my fears..."

Quote 2 from the essay:

My children had left home, they were off, so I was no longer a home mother." This casting off of identities became for her, "a very positive thing. I realized that my 'identity things' were not there, but I was still there. You could take away all my identities, and I was still there. That kind of knowledge has really been a beautiful thing." The first poem she wrote again was "Trust Me," the affirmation that ends the 1989 collection Home. Deep. Blue.

These quotations make perfect sense in the essay, but because I have removed them from their moorings I think they become both clearer and more confusing. That pleases me. This is my version of taking found language and doing something with it.

My experiment:

She was with Dr Shea for ten years.
"He said, 'For you, you should write every day,
including Christmas!' Valentine laughs.
"And that really changed my life
and it changed my fears..."