The Intimate Alphabet

Lisa A. Dickson is a freelance writer living in Guelph, Ontario.

This poetic rendition of the correspondence between the American painter
Georgia O’Keeffe and the photographer Alfred Stieglitz traces
O’Keeffe’s development as a painter, from her youth on the American
prairie through her rise to the top of the New York art scene in the
early decades of the century. McHale’s direct and economical style
captures the sensuality of color and an intimacy much like the intimate
perspective on flowers for which O’Keeffe herself is famous.

A study of artistic vision, the collection presents at its heart the
professional and intensely personal relationship between O’Keeffe and
her husband and agent, Stieglitz. Drawn to each other, but separated by
O’Keeffe’s desire for solitude and landscape, the two are bound
together in the poems by Stieglitz photographing O’Keeffe and her
paintings, and O’Keeffe in turn sending paintings back like messages:
“I know you hear me so / I continue speaking.” Being seen through
Stieglitz’ lenses is itself a kind of seeing for O’Keeffe, who made
herself “... transparent and / shattered your white light / into a
profusion / of blossoms.” Kathleen McHale has produced a collection
that captures the voice of an artist who liked clean lines and spaces
where “... brushes and colors live quietly / at the center.”