Pelvis with Distance

by Jessica Jacobs

A biography-in-poems of Georgia O'Keeffe, interwoven with the poet's lyric accounts of a solitary month in a primitive desert cabin. A narrative-driven collection that reads like a novel, this book delves into issues of creativity, feminism, and relationships, while exploring turn-of-the last century New York City and the New Mexico high desert of the 1930s and today.

Genres: Poetry, Biography

128 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2015

About the author

Jessica Jacobs is the author of Take Me with You, Wherever You’re Going (Four Way Books), one of Library Journal’s Best Poetry Books of the Year, winner of the Goldie Award in Poetry from the Golden Crown Literary Society, and a finalist for both the Brockman-Campbell and Julie Suk Book Awards. Her debut collection, Pelvis with Distance (White Pine Press), a biography-in-poems of Georgia O’Keeffe, won the New Mexico Book Award in Poetry, was an Over the Rainbow selection by the American Library Association, and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award and Julie Suk Award. An avid long-distance runner, Jessica has worked as a rock climbing instructor, bartender, and professor, and is now the Chapbook Editor of the Beloit Poetry Journal. She lives in Asheville, NC, with her wife, the poet Nickole Brown, with whom she co-authored Write It! 100 Poetry Prompts to Inspire (Spruce Books/PenguinRandomHouse), and is at work on parallel collections of essays and poems exploring spirituality, Torah, and Midrash.

Reviews

[Sally · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this whole project--the way the poems work as a biography of Georgia O'Keefe, an exhibit of moments in her growing independence and vision, and the effective lyric tension between O'Keefe's painting poems, excerpted letters between herself and Stieglitz, and the current-day poet writing from a remote cabin in Abiquiu. There is much to admire in the music and the command of the line, which were as absorbing as the narrative scope of the book. Handling imagery of/about O'Keefe's own images is a mighty task, and the poems did not disappoint. Those bones, those flowers, and especially those doors! Fine work--I look forward to reading it again.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'll confess that you could fit my knowledge of Georgia O'keefe's life inside something smaller than a thimble. Other than the assumption that her portraits of flowers equated sex, and skulls with death (as the poet points out near the end of the collection), I walked away from these poems feeling so much more enlightened. And yes, I was reluctant to walk away (oh, I will return), because here there was something luminous and truthful. Not just in the poems pertaining to O'keefe's life and art, but the glimpse into the poet's personal journey while researching her subject. What I love about Jessica Jacobs's poems is that I feel as though I was invited into them. She holds open a door into the life of this great artist and her husband, photographer Alfred Stieglitz. I never felt as though I were eavesdropping, but given a place to appreciate what they meant to each other and the intimacy that threaded their lives and work. A great deal of this accomplishment is owed to the eloquent narrative and imagery that drives these poems. In a word: stunning.

[Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of those books you take to a desert island. The poet captures something powerful with these poems which blend art, place, relationship and her own personal experience with those of the artist, Georgia O’Keeffe. Isolation, the courage to go deep into the “unknown” self, both mirroring Georgia’s thoughts and going deeper still into them. I got lost in the words and many times I had to stop and put the book down in order to let them sink in. Call and response... The breadth of the poet’s research is evident without the academic intruding on the art.

I have been to Abiquiu, Ghost Ranch, the Black Place, the White Place. It was through G.O., I discovered the synesthete Kandinsky and his desire to make music in painting, another kind of Ekphrasis. These poems tie all these experiences together, a woman’s conversation with relationships and isolation, a meetings of artists across time. Georgia, Jessica to the reader. Brilliant. Beautiful.

[Sybil Topel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having read quite a bit about Georgia O’Keeffe and having seen many of her works, I enjoyed reading the poems and letters. Watching one artist’s inspiration deepen as she experiences another artist’s journey was to reawaken the joy of discovery. Jacobs’ work reinforces the need for creatives to assemble, collide, retreat, regroup, and share their experiences on the page and the canvas. Gorgeous reimagining. Lyric poetry. Inspirational.

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection feels like an accretion, that each poem adds to something bigger than the poem before, and by the end, this is a deeply satisfying collection.

[Laela · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jessica Jacob’s takes us into the life of Georgia O’Keeffe through a lens of poetry and fragments of the artist's words. Jacobs primarily does this by telling an account of her own journey into the deserts of New Mexico. These poems are the words of a writer contemplating an artist. I was skeptical of the form at first, but once I began this collection I couldn't stop. The poems and passages in this collection are varied. At times, they are a bold statement on the O’Keefe (I am no one's wife/I own and abide in two houses and inhabit my face as fully/In my desert, I orchestrate the light, seat myself beneath this cow skull). At other times, they are beautifully subtle (Pelvis, that hollow and distant arch/Distance, basined by bone, ambit by sound). Jacobs doesn’t hold back either. She succeeds in capturing the artist’s most intimate moments, such as her first encounters with Stieglitz, her lonely days painting in the desert, and personal letters exchanged between her and her husband when they were apart, without sounding off-base or overdone. At times, Jacobs’ words directly intermingle with O’Keefe’s in the forms of letters or quotes. In other places, Jacobs fills the page with just own reflections of her time in the desert. Either way, it is clear from Jacobs’ work that her own imagination and immersion into O’Keefe’s life was no easy task. Rather, it was an arduous journey, one that was oftentimes filled with terror. Thus, Jacobs’ collection does not just strive to represent O’Keeffe. Instead, the author paints a wide landscape, one that primarily delves into O’Keefe’s life and her relationship with Stieglitz, but is bookended and informed by her present-day memories and desires. Once I began “Pelvis with Distance” I could not stop. My only regret after finishing it is that I never heard Jessica Jacobs read these poems aloud at Hendrix College (where I attend school). I highly recommend this book to anyone interesting in poetry and art, even if you are not the biggest Georgia O’Keefe fan. I certainly wasn’t before reading this book!

[Keshia · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection of poetry is one centered around the works of Georgia O'Keeffe, primarily focusing on the work she did on New Mexico. It is set up in a way that creates an intimate string of connection between poet, painter, and photographer. It is a personal imagining of O'Keeffe's and Alfred Stieglitz relationship, with excerpts of historical significance adding more breadth to the poetry. All the while Jacobs tells of her own journey in order to find her own sense of Georgia O'Keeffe, tasting the scents and sights of isolation. This collection seems like the combined efforts to find the essence of an artist...and I think it succeeds. The poetry, in all ways both biographical and imagined, is compelling and riveting. It is a plucking of thought, inspired the history and art, and brought to life through words.Oftentimes poetry seems to sloppily capture the uncapturable, but I think what Jacobs did here was capture that sense in a way that was both well-done and utterly unique. I can feel O'Keeffe, shining through, snapshots of her years, staring back at me through her words. Jacobs asks, if O'Keeffe had known her, would she had been significant, and I think the answer is irrevocably, yes.

[Danielle DeTiberus · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Larry Levis’s essay “Autobiography,” he wrote that “In his whole life, my father wrote only two letters to me. Both began ‘How’s tricks?’ My father felt about as comfortable with writing as someone might who holds a poisonous snake at the end of a stick, or, on occasions, at the end of a pencil.”

Why did this quote come to me again and again as I read Jessica’s book Pelvis with Distance for the first time? If you were a fly on the wall, this is literally what you would have heard repeated with almost each turn of the page: Whaaaaaaat!?

As in, how did she do that? As in, there is some magic happening here. I would have to turn the page back, each time, hoping—and also somehow not hoping—to figure out her sleight of hand.

What Jessica has done in her debut collection is blur the lines between poetry and prose, persona and memoir, archive and art. The collection is a love letter to an artist, and a chronicle of falling in love. Who is falling in love with whom changes depending on how we turn the page. And as we do, we fall in love, most of all, with the language.

[Syd Stoll · Rating 5 out of 5]

I saw this author at a poetry reading in Lawrence and I was so impressed with her writing that I just had to buy this book. It was definitely a great decision. The descriptions really resonated with me and the parallel stories of Georgia O'Keefe's life and the authors solitary time in a New Mexico cabin were well written and extremely interesting. I don't usually read poetry, but I thought this book was amazing!

[Betsy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book while touring O'Keeffe country in New Mexico. O'Keeffe has been a hero of mine for a long time now, and I loved getting this poetic perspective on her inner life, intertwined with Jacobs' account of trying to come to "know" her. Exquisite.

[Cheryl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Complex. Moving. It took me a minute to learn how to read this book, but once I did, it was a marvelous experience.

For students of poetry: If you're looking to study ordering, explorations of identity & historical figures, and/or the combination of poetry & art, I would recommend this collection.