Ghost Ranch: Georgia O’Keeffe
by Philip Gross
How far can you get
from the attics, ateliers,1 insect buzz
and shove of openings, private views?
Here, there’s nothing but studio,
5 inside, outside. Nothing.
But this face
with its hardening angles,
bank-clerk’s hair, has grown mannish
as a frontier woman’s. How far
10 can you get from iris throats,
swallow-you-in-one gulp mauves,
from night blacks, pollen sulphurs
that enfold you like a child
in mother’s wardrobe? And why
15 should it come as a surprise
if bare rock opens for her
like a flower, giving up colours
like scents to the sun—not like boom-
and-bust-in-one-day desert flora
20 but slowly, hard come by, the bloom
of the whole West? Oh, spare me
the poetry, her eyes say. Look
til you are what you look at:
landscape.
25 Gulches.
Going blind
as if from too much sun glare
those eyes narrow on some distance
I can’t grasp. I haven’t got that far.
On which time period in O’Keeffe’s life does the writer focus in “Ghost Ranch: Georgia O’Keeffe”?
her later years in Taos, New Mexico
her time as a commercial artist in Chicago
her return to Texas when she did charcoal drawings
her years at Lake George and New York City, New York
