Haptic: Dennis Tedlock, translator, reading from 2000
Years Of Mayan Literature (U.C. Press), Meridian Gallery, for the
Poetry Center, San Francisco. 01/29/2010
Easy it is to account someone as a lyric poet. What one
most often means by that is that the poem’s words are composed in such a way as
to rise and sing as well as share other properties of music. But that description
offers little in the way of concrete specifics and their differentiations. It
is the same problem when one assumes that folks who make jazz are somehow
similar. When what one really wants to hear and register are the ways in which
the musicians are different. Similarly, when poets send their poems out into
the air, we can listen closely for that; a poem or group of them will give off
such different shapes, tones and rhythms, as well as such different senses of
color or sometimes the complete absence of such. But more to the point, as a
listener, it is to let ones body, ear and eye become unmistakably present. It
is to hear the climb and fall of abbreviated or extended lines; the way they
thread through resistances to make a tapestry of un-indentured spaces; there
where the elements collide, collaborate or just as suddenly disappear; to
resolve into a space where the lines or even rhythmic punctuation marks become
specific signatures; to follow them across the poem’s field as they expand,
multiply and accommodate whatever depth or height. The sensuous acknowledgement
of the made space is the haptic one.
[[My apologies to Hal, to Truck et al that I have not been more prolific here! I got implicated and obligated on another project. However, the entries and attention to writing about my 'haptic' drawing process has personally been quite helpful. I am preparing a book, Poetry Reading Haptics, that will incorporate versions of some of these entries. To be published in about a month. Meanwhile, if have interest in my work, my website remains:
www.stephenavincent.com]]
