#stephen vincent

[spit8]

Stephen Vincent. Haptic: My Mother Breathing Into the Infinite (2010)

“I listen to my now late mother breathing. She’s 93. She is taking an afternoon nap in her bedroom. I am in the "family room" making this haptic. The sounds of her breathing are projected over the speaker on the audio-surveillance system. My pen strokes follow the coarse sound, the circular movement—in and out—and the constant, yet variable rhythm of each breath. In listening so closely, while matching the duration of each breath with a pen stroke, I become aware that I have become at one with her breathing. But it is not just my mother breathing. It suddenly seems as if her breathing—in and out—is the whole world breathing in its most fundamental, primal form and that I and everyone else, no matter where we are, each belong to this breathing motion that precedes time, creates time, and dissolves in time; then, just as inevitably, it creates the next breath, one wave upon another, peaceful, then turbulent, then various, as if our lungs are both at one and a mirror of a global ocean of air that is endlessly turning over and over again. And the rhythm of the breathing is the rhythm, so various and full, at the source and birth of every living thing. And there it is, the haptic unrolling before me out of my pen, rendered mark by mark. And this perhaps mystic thought of my mother, as she ever so slowly begins to pass from the world of her body, that she will pass, as all of us, back into the larger cosmos to an eternal mother that is constantly breathing.”

[brokehorrorfan]

Kenner's The Real Ghostbusters toy line offered many gems, but perhaps none were more inspired than Fearsome Flush. The October Academy has turned the ghost toilet into a 2" enamel pin for $10.

[beating-beetle-heart]

Attempting blackout poetry for the first time. Doing it digitally because I can't bring myself to mark up a book lol

[aholdingspace]

stephen vincent

[why-i-love-comics]

[runthefever]

72.

Eleanor Stay the fuck Away from Attica: Bloated gutters, scratch Filled songs, blistered voices, No women, the absence of wind, The death of rain, whiplash In the front seat, the demolition derby Wet circuits Dry exits Stay away.

88.

]loud ]with your little axe ]Charles ]open my heart ]finger each and every louver ]stop at nothing ]strip the sky ]velvet

96.

Alli, you are so good willed, I am afraid to touch you.

100.

Boys, girls What’s the difference?

[thelatenow]

Poet Stephen Vincent writes up The Late Now

       At TLN 3: Dr. Strangeverb we were honored to have the venerable San Francisco poet Stephen Vincent and Sandra Phillips, SFMOMA’s Senior Curator of Photography, in the house. Well, out in the park. Stephen’s latest book is the remarkable After Language — Letters to Jack Spicer (BlazeVOX, 2011), a most human, moving book which I’m especially appreciating as I get to know Jack Spicer, reading After Language alongside the Spicer anthology my vocabulary did this to me (thank you, Standard Schaefer).        After Strangeverb, Stephen wrote the following note about the show, which made me and The Late Now cadre right proud. And we take his idea of “how impossible it would be do this anywhere else” than Portland as a challenge: we want to take The Late Now to the Bay!        Thank you, Stephen, for your kind words:

Last evening, this was one terrific, improbable great event literally on the Town Square in the middle the business district in downtown Portland, Oregon: The Late Now Episode 3: Dr. Strangeverb or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Avant-garde Poetry  Leo Daedalus, host, with special guests including James Yeary, Standard Schaefer, Mark Owens, Rodney Koeneke, Allison Cobb, David Abel.

Leo D., not a poet but a genuine Avant G reader and actor, did his homework with each of the poets. Staged as a theater/tv ‘50s style interview show, the poets were introduced, one by one, then read statements or poems and then sat down to be interviewed. Along the way, Leo D. wd throw in quotes from C. Bernstein, Ron Silliman & other contemporaries — including a Hemingway-W.Stevens punch-out in the Florida Keys — and sauced with irony, humor and occasional disbelief while each of the poets with unfeigned sincerity argued &/or demonstrated the points behind either their work — becoming occasionally brilliantly articulate as Leo kept probing them to get down to the root of their issue — or the larger Avant Garde issue of what language was trying to do, or could not do (opaque vs. transparent etc.). At one point Leo D. eloquently read a Standard Schaefer poem in an Italian translation from a current anthology of American poems.

Yes, the event was great theater. It ended with Leo D. and Mark Owens giving a great operatic rendition of Schwitters’ Ursonate, their voices practically bouncing and making echoes off the walls of the local skyscrapers.

All this 2-hour event done in front of an audience that varied from 30 to another 70 folks ambling through the Square to take in a minute or more. When it was over it was hard not to think how impossible it would be do this anywhere else in America on any of its squares or plazas. It must be Portland — the kindness and warmth of its poets to each other and openness to the City itself, this frontier place with not much in the way of a poetic tradition or combatting or competing powers and traditions, and this lovely bunch of people willing to step up to the public plate and speak of experimental poetry without any kind of fear. Just plain fresh air to those of us in the audience — often astonished, laughing and loving this public moment.

— Stephen Vincent, August 2012

I learned later that Sandra Phillips speaks Italian, and was therefore able to appreciate my reading of Standard Schaefer’s poem in the Italian translation (which Standard self-effacingly joked sounded better than the original; hey, everything sounds better in Italian). My friends know I’m a bit obsessed with languages, and I always hope that my frequent indulgences in foreign tongues on the show aren’t tiresome. (I’m always asserting that the music of languages we don’t understand is a worthwhile experience in and of itself.) Sandra’s unexpected ear for Italian reminded me that, in the broadest sense, one can never anticipate the possible resonances of one’s actions. Grazie per le tue orecchie, Sandra!

- - - 

> See also the notes on the guest poets for Episode 3: Dr. Strangeverb, including David Abel, Allison Cobb, Rodney Koeneke, Standard Schaefer, James Yeary, and Mark Owens.

[theexplosionofideal]

Nothing says that poetry won't drive you to squalor. Or a big love gone way sad. The last big joke on the makers is that the poems, those silly, enormous things, go way beyond whatever was us. Eternity—those poems—has nothing of you in it. The rearview mirror is a joke. The clarity of what was left behind is mere gossip. The mirror is covered with tinfoil. As you say, Jack, only poems talk to poems.

Stephen Vincent After Language: Letters to Jack Spicer