ON POLITICAL ABSTRACTIONS

Stephen Vincent's Haptics series -- including the poetics prose about such -- is as good an example of what is meant when we/certainly-I say that the act of creativity makes its author a better human being. Better in terms of being a more engaged person.

I remember when I came out with my first U.S.-published book, Reproductions of the Empty Flagpole. And I had claimed that these 'abstract" poems are political (for part of its political impetus, check HERE, per linkie from Jean). This claim bemused some. But now I point you to Stephen saying about his haptics which, to me, are abstract in the sense of being non-figurative:

The consciousness becomes awakened, refreshed, alert to the present. A haptic does not decide anything for anyone, or make any kind of claim on the representation of objects in either formal or an historic sense. These are not ‘things’ as such.

However, it would be disingenuous for me to suggest that the work is made oblivious to historical and/or personal and social content. Again, to the contrary. In the pressure of making a haptic, one’s consciousness it quite open and alert to the currents of public, domestic and other ‘orders’ of current knowledge.

Thank you for creating these, Stephen!