Archive
04/26/12
The Poet Lunches with Two Camera Pros
This afternoon, at a nearby Italian restaurant, having lunch, I'm sitting with two aging world-class photographers And listening, in respectful, relatively ignorant, silence, As they discuss the radical disparities Between just yesterday and the most immediate second — Film and digital technologies, Proclaiming the complete meaninglessness of "f-stops," The irreversible irrelevance of "depth-of-field" concerns, Versus the "speed of control," the ability to "massage light," To "create new worlds," and the "miraculous vision of infinity," Supplied by today's electronic cameras.
And when they bury their eulogies for old-school "shooting," Their mutual disbelief over how quickly the revolution has arrived, Obsoleting everything more than half a decade new And acknowledging the certainty of every Nikon Coolpix owner Becoming an Ansel Adams, Cartier-Bresson, Annie Leibovitz, They look over their loquacity's shoulders And focus on me, as if just now noticing my presence. After all, what could a poet possibly know, Who still flings a pen's ink, against blue-ruled notebook pages, To arrest reality . . . with the sharpness of metaphor, imagery — Each of his words worth a thousand pictures?
04/26/12
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