Pennsylvania Tableau
First Shot
Photograph your deer. The best shots are often taken before field-dressing your kill. We recommend it. In most cases, you may want to reposition the deer to be in the best light, to be on clean ground or snow, or to make it look more natural. If the deer’s tongue is hanging outside its mouth, push it back. In most cases, you may want to reposition the deer. Wipe clean from the body any debris or excess blood visible to the camera. Calibrate the aperture, make it look more natural. Be in best light. Reposition the photograph. Your deer.
Second Shot
Photograph your deer. We recommend taking a shot while field-dressing your kill. In most cases, you may want to reposition your deer to lie on even terrain. Clear of rocks, trees, debris. Michigan hunters save one or two sticks. More natural. We don’t recommend it. In most cases, you may want to cut upward. Anus to sternum. Calibrate the aperture. Wipe clean from the body the body. Reposition the viscera, make it look less visible to the camera. Be on clean ground or snow, be in natural light. Photograph. Your deer. Push it back.
Third Shot
Photograph your deer. We recommend a finishing shot of the body. Michigan hunters hang their deer head up, tail down. We don’t recommend it. Hang your deer with its head down. Hang your deer high enough. Out of reach. Animals, pets, children. Push it back. Make sure air circulates through the chest cavity. Natural. Michigan hunters wedge one or two sticks sideways in the chest cavity. In most cases, this doesn’t look natural. Wipe clean. Reposition. Calibrate the aperture. Your deer. Spoils at ambient temperatures over fifty degrees. Be in little to no light.
| Jack Snyder |
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levelheaded: Pennsylvania Tableau
Ostensibly a set of instructions for taking three photographs—one before, one during, and one after gutting a recently killed deer—this poem is split into three stylized sections. Each section is between 94-99 words long. Each is roughly rectangular (roughly the shape of a snapshot). Each begins with the phrase “Photograph your deer” and contains repeated phrases like “Calibrate your aperture” and the grammatically dissociated “Your deer.”
The similarity of these sections reflects the formality of the photos they describe. With a touch of irony, the speaker purports, if certain rules are followed, we might take an ideal Pennsylvania deer hunt photo. If this seems absurd, check out how similar the photos of hunters and their killed deer appear in a Google image search for “deer hunt.” How many of them feature a hunter standing slightly behind his kill holding the animal’s head up by the antlers? Why is this a hunter’s default “first shot” (tongue pushed back and all)? Does each photo give us a different story? Is it art?
Even if we deny these photos are art, it’s hard to deny the possibility of artfulness in such a photo. The speaker here seems to agree. He instructs us to “Reposition the viscera, make it look less visible to the camera.” It’s a precise instruction, and we would have to be dedicated to the potential image to move the “viscera” out of the way. We’re also told at separate times “you may want to reposition the deer to be in the best light, to be on clean ground or snow” and “be in little to no light” and “Be in little to no light.” These are very particular, literal instructions. Their repetition implies that the lighting in the photos is of especial importance.
This opens up questions about the speaker’s stock in all this. If there is a façade of objectivity here, it is thin. The speaker feels a funny rivalry between himself and “Michigan hunters” who use “sticks” a lot more in their photos. There is a reluctant pride in the speaker’s way of doing things. At the same time, there is an almost accusatory tone in the repeated “Your deer”—as if the addressed hunter has unjustifiably claimed ownership of the killed deer. Whether this claim of ownership stems from the shooting of the deer or the shooting of the photograph is not clear, thus the poem opens up a critique of our compulsion to record everything we do. It’s a poem about Facebook as much as it’s a poem about hunting. So “Hurra for the pumpkin pie!” and hurra, apparently, for deer season.
– The Editors
