Holy Shit! It’s Polis 4 or Here Comes Polis: Municipalismo Heterogéneo! vs. The Penal Code of the Empire

Polis: Municipalismo heterogéneo! vs. The Penal Code of the Empire

After much delay, the long awaited fourth edition is now available for download. While we had fully intended to release a printed version of the issue as has been our practice since the first issue, and even held out hope that we would be able to do so up until just a few weeks ago, ultimately the money to cover the cost of printing never materialized. Other methods of bringing a print edition out were considered, including print on demand, but after exploring our options here we just didn’t feel a suitable solution was possible.  Thanks to the magic of the internet, the lost issue of polis is now available as a digital document for free! We encourage you all to download this issue and read to your hearts content. If you feel the writing within this issue is worthy of further dissemination, please share the above link with any and all who may also enjoy. Make sure to check back here frequently as more information and writing begins to appear.

thank you

Polis editors

The Memphite Lord of / All Creation

I’ve been reading Robert Gordon’s It Came from Memphis. It is manifestly a book of polis, woven primarily out of stories of music-making in the river city in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, but aided and enriched by parti-colored threads of cultural collision: desegregation and integration (first and foremost), but also regional migration (to and from places near–West Memphis, the Mississippi Delta, Muscle Shoals–and far–New York City and Hoboken, NJ), genre splicing (big band jazz, bebop jazz, rhythm and blues, country blues, rock and roll), interdisciplinary art (painting, photography, puppetry, poetry). But race is front and center–and amidst the cultural exchange Gordon finds both vital exploration and vile exploitation. Gordon conjures a shifting, highly subjective, sometimes poetic, frequently vernacular, heavily researched, deftly organized text. It is not documentary poetry but likely a second cousin.

Situation in Venezuela

I’ve been following poet and translator Guillermo Juan Parra here and here for information about the situation in Venezuela. (I’m adding this link for a left perspective.)

Greg Cook’s Enchanted Forest

Greg Cook’s paintings entitled “Enchanted Forest”,  prominently featured in the pages of Polis 2011: Este Jardín, are now on display: Check it out! 

The “Enchanted Forest”  paintings of happy and sad trees, are hanging in the windows of Malden Access Television, 145 Pleasant St., Malden, Massachusetts, from Sept. 23 to Oct. 14. as part of the  “Window Arts Malden” project organized by Malden Arts. Join the founder of The New England Journal of Aesthetic Research, Cook, and some of the other dozens of artists displaying their art in storefront windows downtown at a reception for this hyper local Yokelist public art project from 6 to 8 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 4, at the Malden Senior Center, 7 Washington St.  Meanwhile, sketches for my “Enchanted Forest” series, including an awesome 3D model, are on view at Zeitgeist Gallery, 167 Market St., Lowell, Massachusetts, from Sept. 15 to Oct. 4.

Dog Day Poetry Marathoon

If you’re in Boston this weekend, you might want to check this out. The Sunday lineup features a number of Polis contributors:

SUNDAY
1:00    Anthony Cuellar
1:08    Suzanne Mercury
1:16    Joel Sloman
1:24    James Cook
1:32    Farrah Field
1:40    Kimberly Lyons
1:48    Anna Moschovakis
break
2:06    Rachel Levitsky: Talk on the Office of Recuperative Strategies
2:21    Jim Dunn: Talk on Harry Crosby
2:36    Carol Weston: Talk on Stephen Jonas
break
3:01    Aaron Kiely
3:09    Ryan Gallagher
3:17    David Rich
3:25    Frank Spignese
3:33    Amanda Cook
3:41    Sean Cole
3:49    Michael Franco
3:57    Gerrit Lansing

check out the Boston Poetry Collective Blog for more info.

AMERARCANA: A Bird & Beckett Review 2012

Check out the 2012 issues of AMERARCANA

May Day 2012

If not for May Day, Polis may not exist.

4/11 Gloucester Reading

Time Being by Joseph Torra

         Frequent Polis contributor Joseph Torra (not to be confused with former Yankee’s manager Joe Torre) has a new book appearing this spring from Quale Press. Time Being, a book-length prose poem journal written over the course of one year:

…Between December 2006 and December 2007, this long poem/journal/improvisation records in one long rush a year’s worth of observations and events. Torra’s eyes and ears are alert to fatherhood, family, food, writing, art, music, the urban environment, and much more. In every way, his improvisation attunes the reader to the rhythm of life. (Source SPD)

Time Being is available through Small Press Distribution, or get a copy direct from the Amazonian Death Star.

 

An excerpt from Time Being originally appeared in the 2010 issue of Polis; Resistance.

 

SF Reading