Kissing Stieglitz Good-Bye
Gerald Stern
Every city in America is approached
through a work of art, usually a bridge
but sometimes a road that curves underneath
or drops down from the sky. Pittsburgh has a tunnel—
you don't know it—that takes you through the rivers
and under the burning hills. I went there to cry
in the woods or carry my heavy bicycle
through fire and flood. Some have little parks—
San Francisco has a park. Albuquerque
is beautiful from a distance; it is purple
at five in the evening. New York is Egyptian,
especially from the little rise on the hill
at 14-C; it has twelve entrances
like the body of Jesus, and Easton, where I lived,
has two small floating bridges in front of it
that brought me in and out. I said good-bye
to them both when I was 57. I'm reading
Joseph Wood Krutch again—the second time.
I love how he lived in the desert. I'm looking at the skull
of Georgia O'Keeffe. I'm kissing Stieglitz good-bye.
He was a city, Stieglitz was truly a city
in every sense of the word; he wore a library
across his chest; he had a church on his knees.
I'm kissing him good-bye; he was, for me,
the last true city; after him there were
only overpasses and shopping centers,
little enclaves here and there, a skyscraper
with nothing near it, maybe a meaningless turf
where whores couldn't even walk, where nobody sits,
where nobody either lies or runs; either that
or some pure desert: a lizard under a boojum,
a flower sucking the water out of a rock.
What is the life of sadness worth, the bookstores
lost, the drugstores buried, a man with a stick
turning the bricks up, numbering the shards,
dream twenty-one, dream twenty-two. I left
with a glass of tears, a little artistic vial.
I put it in my leather pockets next
to my flask of Scotch, my golden knife and my keys,
my joyful poems and my T-shirts. Stieglitz is there
beside his famous number; there is smoke
and fire above his head; some bowlegged painter
is whispering in his ear; some lady-in-waiting
is taking down his words. I'm kissing Stieglitz
goodbye, my arms are wrapped around him, his photos
are making me cry; we're walking down Fifth Avenue;
we're looking for a pencil; there is a girl
standing against the wall—I'm shaking now
when I think of her; there are two buildings, one
is in blackness, there is a dying poplar;
there is a light on the meadow; there is a man
on a sagging porch. I would have believed in everything.
I am still trying to believe in everything.
When I first learned of Georgia O'Keeffe and Stieglitz, saw the sensual photographs he had taken of her hands, (probably those first years when I was hidden away in the stacks of the university's library), I couldn't believe she left him for the desert. She left Alfred Steiglitz! She left this man who loved her, when he was ill, when he was dying. And, unbelievably, he didn't hate her for it. And, from all I can gather, from thier letters, she never felt guilt for leaving.
She loved him, but she loved her work more.
When I was young, I thought O'Keeffe ungrateful, selfish. Now that I am older I understand, what an act of courage it must of been for her, to leave New York City and Steiglitz, and all both offered, and to choose like a man. But, being a woman, she had to choose between love and her life's work. She chose the latter, and people like me, (in my younger incarnation), judged her for it.
She knew very early in her life, what I am just coming to know: Art is a jealous lover and despite what you try to make yourself believe, that you can have both, you must choose. You can have only one lover. And when you make the choice, that you, that what you want, that your vision, is what really matters, you will be judged. Perhaps even damned.
Does it really matter when your desert beckons?
This coming year, I must choose.
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