Music by Kevin Puts

Libretto by Kevin Puts, with all text drawn from the letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz

(GO=Georgia O’Keeffe; AS=Alfred Stieglitz)

Introduction
(GO) My first memory is of the brightness of light — light all around.

 First Correspondence
(GO) Dear Mister Stieglitz —
I am the young woman
whose charcoals you saw.
If you remember what they said to you —
I would like to know —
if you want to tell me. 

(AS) Dear Miss O’Keeffe —
What am I to say?
It is impossible to put into words
what I saw and felt.
I do want to tell you
they gave me much joy.
I do not know what you had
in your mind.
But they have brought you
closer to me.
With greetings,
Alfred Stieglitz 

(GO) Mister Stieglitz —
I like what you write me — maybe —
I make them — just to express myself.
Things I feel and want to say.
Words and I — are not good friends at all. 

On the train — New York to Virginia.
I got a telegram saying my mother is dead.
I wish you would write me.
If you want to. 

Not if you don’t want to.

(AS) Dear Miss O’Keeffe —
For two days I carried a letter
in my pocket — addressed to you. 

(GO) I am writing because

I am afraid to sleep —

Why did I finally tear it up?

Last night — a very bad dream about Mama.

Words are so terrible —
A living, aching silence,
My hands were on her face.
I know the shape so well.
Isn’t it absurd that I am afraid now?

How you must suffer now...

Thank you for letting me feel I can talk to you.

A living, aching silence,

I seem to want to tell you everything I know.

A living, aching silence...

Maybe I can sleep now.
Goodnight.

A Soul Like Yours
(AS) A greeting from Boston —
taking my daughter
to camp in New Hampshire. 

The drawings you sent
are as fine as anything I know.
I want the world to see them.
In one, I feel the powers of the night.
To look into a soul like yours —
a great privilege.
I feel it roaming
through space and night.

 Twenty-three years ago today
I got married.

You yearn for someone to understand
every heartbeat of yours.
The yearn goes out — whether you wish it
or not. I can never see
enough into human souls.

How I understand
every pulse beat of yours.
The story of those drawings —
Your children — I
their guardian.
A Woman’s Soul
laid bare in all its beauty,
crying out into the starlight night.

Goodnight, Georgia O’Keeffe.
It’s like a beautiful folk melody — the sound. 

Georgia O’Keeffe.
Georgia O’Keeffe...

Ache

(GO) I’ve been lying here
listening for you in the dark —
aching for you
way to my fingers’ ends —

As I came up the street
into the sunset — I wondered —
can I stand it — the terrible
fineness and beauty of the
intensity of you.

(AS) Rarest flower on earth
— that has no withering.

(GO) The hot setting sun so brilliant —
shining white I could
hardly walk toward it —
wanting you
with such an all over ache —
loving — feeling — all the parts
of my body touched and kissed.

(AS) Light and Air —
Height and Depth —
the Spirit of Life, Life itself.
You dearest thing that ever
Breathed on earth.
Everything that’s wondrous
In the world.

(GO) Maybe you don’t know
how mad I seem to be growing —
you will have to think for me
when I can’t think for myself —
all of me waiting for you
to touch the center of me
with the center of you —
the reaching of something
in the whole body
for the center of heaven —

(AS) I hear a song
no mortal has ever heard.
I hear her voice — her spirit
bathes me in light.

Georgia and Alfred (Orchestral Interlude #1)

Violin

(GO) Dearest —
It is a wonderful night.
I’ve been hanging out the window
waiting to tell someone about it —

I’ve labored on the violin
till all my fingers
are sore —

You never in your wildest dreams
imagined anything worse
than the noises
I get out of it 

Faraway
(AS) My Sweetestheart
In her element —
Faraway still right here.
It’s great to know you
so terrifically alive.
You the wild child
of the soil, I city-bred
of the city.

Three letters from you —
My hands all atremble.
When I read “Dearest — “
I toppled and burst out crying.
Still my Georgia — everything right.

Taos was in the stars.
And you are free.

Haven’t I worked all these years
to set you free from me?
But our parting as we did —
your steeling yourself,
your letters not those
of former years.

I cried into the night.

I robbed you of your faith
when you were strengthening mine.

Georgia — Georgia — I’ll win back your faith.
Georgia — Georgia —
You must believe.

Taos was in the stars.
And you are free.

Taos
(GO) In this sun
one just feels suspended in heat —
expecting to disappear
at any moment.

It was a really beautiful afternoon —
The simple Pueblo village —
all of mud —
and the dancing — everyone in colors of such
rich saturated pigment —
the brilliant sun and blue sky.

It went on and on —
the brilliancy of color — the live eyes —
it is terribly exciting — and at the same time
quieting like the ocean.

I want to wear a sheet
and ride like the Indian men
that came tearing through the Pueblo
gate in a body — all riding like mad.

I just feel so like expanding here —
way out to the horizon —
and up into the sunshine —
and out into the night.

The Thing You Call Holy
(AS) The house is still.
And the morning
gray and winterlike.

It was eleven years ago Sunday
That you hopped off the train
in Pennsylvania Station
ran up to me and kissed me!
Like a happy child.
Eleven years.
I see all its phases —
All the days and hours and moments
of ecstasy and pain
The poison of resentments
The poison of jealousy —
The worst poison in the world.
The growth of something very beautiful between us.

(GO) I must write you tonight,
to tell you what living here means to me.

(AS) I see the studio [on] 59th Street —
all the wonder and beauty and life —

(GO) As yet, no particular friends —
and I don’t want any.

(AS) All the terrible ordeal — the whole
evolution of us.

(GO) Think of me with hands like
dark brown gloves — dirty fingernails,
my nose sore on top
from sunburn.

(AS) But I live in the land of ghosts
and can’t go on. You do not need me anymore.
I’d like to die in your arms —
A black cross against a blue sky —

(GO) And now you cry for the center of me
That has been pushed away
For so long.

(AS) You are to paint — and live —
The thing you call holy.

(GO) I just want to get out where
there is space and breath —

(AS+GO) That thing you call holy.

(GO) My love to you, Little Boy.

(AS) A black cross against a blue sky —

GO) My love to you, Little Boy.

(AS) Georgia.
That will be my final
Thought and word.

(GO) What is here is very right.

(AS) Goodnight, Georgia O’Keeffe.

(GO) It is really terribly right.

The High Priestess of the Desert 
 (Orchestral Interlude #2)

(GO) Darling: it is so long
and I do not write you.

Now you must realize
I am old enough
so that people
I have called friends
have died —
but my dogs are here.

Friends
— maybe the best —
and very beautiful too.

Maybe the man
who gave me the dogs
is my friend.
Is the man
who brings me a load of wood
my friend — I give him
a loaf of bread I’ve made
because I know
the bread is good.

Is my framer my friend?
He has been
a great help to me
for many years.

The people I visited
when New York broke me down
were certainly friends.

I have a new woman here
to take care of me.
She may not stay.

The term “friend” is an odd word.

Goodnight, my dearest.
I am sleepy
and a little cold.

Sunset
(GO) Tonight I walked into the sunset.
The whole sky — was just blazing —
and grey blue clouds were riding
all through the holiness of it —
and the whole thing lit up
with flashes of lightning.

I walked out past the last house —
past the locust tree —
and sat on a fence for a long time —

looking —
you see there was nothing
but sky and flat prairie land —
land that seems more like ocean
than anything else I know.

It is absurd the way I love this country.

And the SKY — my dearest — you have never seen SKY —

It is wonderful.

Text Credits: 

Alfred Stieglitz/Georgia O’Keeffe Archive, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Text excerpts from the letter by Georgia O’Keeffe to Alfred Stieglitz, dated June 13, 1929 (c) 2011 Yale University. Used and reprinted by permission of the Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library. All rights reserved.

Alfred Stieglitz/Georgia O’Keeffe Archive, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Text excerpts from the letter by Georgia O’Keeffe to Alfred Stieglitz, dated June 14, 1918 (c) 2011 Yale University. Used and reprinted by permission of the Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library. All rights reserved.