Sewanee Review Pub Date : 2021-01-06 , DOI: 10.1353/sew.2021.0011 Ross Gay
- Be Camera, Black-Eyed Aperture
- Ross Gay (bio)
1
Nikky Finney concludes her National Book Award winning collection Head Off & Split with the poem, " Instruction, Final: To Brown Poets from Black Girl with Silver Leica." Its lines read as an ars poetica, and as a kind of ars pedagogica:
Be camera, black-eyed aperture. Be diamondback terrapin, the only animal that can outrun a hurricane. Be 250 million years old. Be isosceles. Sirius. Rhapsody. Hogon. Dogon. Hubble. Stay hot. . . . Become the lunations. Look up the word southing before you use it in a sentence. Know southing is not a verb. Imitate them remarkable days. Locate all your ascending nodes. Chew eight times before you swallow the lyrics and lamentations of James Brown, Abbey Lincoln, Al Green, Curtis Mayfield, and Aretha. Hey! Watch your [End Page 14] language! Two and a Quarter is not the same as Deuce and a Quarter. Two-fisted is not two-faced. Remember: One monkey don't stop no show. Let your fat belly be quilts of quietus. Pass on what the great winemakers know: The juice is not made in the vats but in the vineyard. Keep yourself rooted in the sun, rain, and darkly camphored air. Grow until you die, but before you do, leave your final kiss: Lay mint or orange eucalyptus garland, double tuck these lips. Careful to the very end what you deny, dismiss, & cut away.
I have spoken the best I know how.
Let me start with devotion. Let me start with love. For instance: how I love this poem, and will be displaying a considerable, even admirable amount of restraint by not delving into every last aspect of it, every nugget of poetic glory: its range of dictions and registers, its broad scope of knowledge (mathematical, cultural, spiritual, ecological, vernacular); its ability or gall to signify, which just means talk shit ("look up the word southing before you use it in a sentence"; "One monkey don't stop no show") and a few breaths later say careful how you talk that shit ("Hey! Watch your language!"); its rhythms built out of short and long sentences, staccato and legato phrasings, the beautiful sensual mouthwork of "let your fat belly be quilts of quietus"; "Hogon. Dogon. Hubble. Stay hot"; those long sentences at the end (I have theories!); the poem's palpable love for everything it lays its eyes and pencil on. (Excellent assignment, by the way: have students look up everything this poem carries in its sky-sized satchel, and then have them write something so full!) You are thinking my restraint flew out the window, but believe me, I'm not even started.
But for the purposes of this thinking I want to turn to the first (final) line, the first (final) command, the first (final) imperative [End Page 15] breath of this poem—which, remember, is the best the poet knows how to say, and is maybe why I'm titling this essay "Be Camera, Black-eyed Aperture." It is a powerful and concise command that reads as sort of straightforward—something like: Record what you see. Make the document. Be that kind of thing. But the magic of the sentence is that that very first reading is really only the very first reading. In which you might notice that there is not an article, no little a that would serve as a kind of lasso between the verb be and the subject camera. The metaphor is weird from the get: it includes the first reading ("Many things are true at once," says Elizabeth Alexander), but it also—what?—adjectives the noun camera—like "be smart" or "be fast" or "be good." Be Camera. What's that even mean? Be glass-eyed and thirsty, be manual, be silver if you're on the black girl's neck. Oh, a good phrase sometimes will settle behind my eyes like a butterfly trying to balance on a zinnia in a breeze. And we've only done the first part of the phrase! But hang on.
Because the second part—"black-eyed aperture"—describes, simply, the camera. The lens is a black eye, and a camera has an aperture. That's...
中文翻译：
是相机，黑眼圈
代替摘要，这里是内容的简要摘录：
- 是相机，黑眼圈
- 罗斯·盖伊（生物）
1个
尼克·芬尼（Nikky Finney）用题为《教学，最终：从黑人女孩与银徕卡到布朗诗人》的诗作结束了她的国家图书奖获奖作品《Head Off＆Split》。它的台词读作是ars poetica，又是ars pedagogica：
是相机，黑眼睛的光圈。是菱纹背龟，唯一可以胜过飓风的动物。已有2.5亿年的历史。等腰。小天狼星 狂想曲。霍根 多贡 哈勃。保持热。。。。成为疯子。在句子中使用南词之前，请先查找该词。知道向南不是动词。模仿他们非凡的日子。找到所有升序节点。在吞下James Brown，Abbey Lincoln，Al Green，Curtis Mayfield和Aretha的歌词和哀叹之前，请先咀嚼八次。嘿！观看您的[End Page 14]语言！二分之一和四分之一与二分之一和四分之一不同。两拳不是两手的。记住：一只猴子不会停不下来。让你肥胖的腹部成为静quiet的被子。传递伟大的酿酒师所知道的：果汁不是在大桶中酿造的，而是在葡萄园中酿造的。保持自己在阳光，雨水和深色樟脑中的生根。成长直到死亡，但在此之前要做的是，留下最后一个吻：放薄荷或橙色桉树花环，双折这些嘴唇。最后，请小心您拒绝，忽略和删除的内容。
我说的是我所能说的最好的话。
让我从奉献开始。让我从爱开始。例如：我如何爱这首诗，并且将通过不深入研究它的每一个方面，诗意的每一个点缀来表现出相当大的，甚至令人钦佩的克制：它的口述和记录范围，广泛的知识范围（数学，文化，精神，生态，乡土语言）；它的能力或胆汁来表示，这仅表示说话可笑（“在句子中使用该词之前先查询南下的单词”；“一只猴子不要停下不露面”），稍后再屏住呼吸，请谨慎地说出拉屎（“嘿！请注意您的语言！”）；它的节奏由短而长的句子，断奏和连奏短语组成，美丽的感性口述是：“让你的胖肚子成为寂静的被子”；“霍根。多贡。哈勃。保持火热”；最后的那些长句子（我有理论！）；这首诗深深地爱着它的眼睛和铅笔。（顺便说一下，出色的作业：让学生查一首这首诗在它巨大的书包中所携带的一切，然后让他们写出如此丰满的东西！）您以为我的束缚飞出了窗外，但相信我，我是甚至还没有开始。
但是出于这种思考的目的，我想转向这首诗的第一行（最后），第一条（最终）命令，第一条（最终）命令性命令[End Page 15] -请记住，这首诗是最好的。诗人知道怎么说，也许这就是为什么我要把这篇文章命名为“成为相机，黑眼圈”。这是一个功能强大而简洁的命令，读起来很简单，就像：记录下您看到的内容。制作文件。做那种事情。但是，这句话的神奇之处在于，一读真的只是一读。在这你可能会注意到，没有一篇文章，没有一点一，将作为一种套索之间的动词是和主体相机。这个比喻从一开始就很奇怪：它包括一读（“很多事情一次成真，”伊丽莎白·亚历山大说），但它也（是什么？）形容名词摄影机，比如“聪明”或“快”。或“成为好人”。成为相机。那是什么意思？如果您是黑人女孩的脖子，则要有玻璃眼睛和口渴，要有体力，要有银子。哦，有时候，一个好词组会像蝴蝶一样试图在微风中平衡百日草的时候在我的眼中浮现。而且我们只完成了短语的第一部分！但是等一下
因为第二部分（“黑眼光圈”）简单地描述了相机。镜头是黑眼睛，照相机有光圈。那是...
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