Fanny Howe - from the Poetry Reading Haptic Series

Hello. My name is Stephen Vincent, poet, artist and photographer. Thank you, Halvard Johnson,  for inviting me to be your current September Truck Driver. I suspect I will be all over the map with my ‘goods’. As road deliveries go, I hope they find you well and pleasureful.

First, just to get started, I will unpack a couple of drawings that I call “haptics.” That is a kind of work in which the lines are dicatated by the sound and pulse of the environment. These two pieces were made on December 2008 while I listened to performances by the poet Fanny Howe.  Under the auspices of the San Francisco State University Poetry Center, in the afternoon she gave a poetry reading on campus; in the evening she delivered the annual George Oppen Memorial Lecture. Clipboard and paper in hand, I let the either hard or soft brush point ink pens follow the punctation, shapes and rhythms of her voice. Whatever came forth, melody, argument or whatever the construction of the work,  the pens were there with her as a kind of both witness and instrument, a visual weaver complimenting the mix: