Pelvis with Distance

Artists and writers share many things, including a passion for observing and detailing the natural world. In this wonderful debut collection, Jacobs crafts a portrait of Georgia O'Keeffe and the striking landscapes she painted. The poet intertwines two story lines—journal entries set in contemporary New Mexico and letters between O'Keeffe and her husband, photographer Alfred Stieglitz—each thread reverberating with the other as they dwell on themes of love, solitude, and creativity. In a combination of lyric poetry and prose entries, Jacobs masterfully describes the setting: "I walk barefoot in the riverbed. The dry/ sand is peppery and coarse." Not even bird song goes unnoticed, "each strand tied back to its singer// audible troughs of air…displaced by the wingbeats/ of low-flying/ hawks." Jacob vivifies both desert landscapes and New York City, where O'Keeffe first met Stieglitz, but she does more than describe how vistas look, delving deeply and making philosophical connections: "A door// is everything a painting/ wants to be. Portal, promise." The only weakness here is the titles, which can be bland, though with the epigraphs they set the reader firmly in time and place, a necessity in a collection that spans many periods and places.