protests

Pop Lit: An Anti-Political Movement

Announcement

EVERYONE right now seems to have a cause or political movement, colored red, pink, purple, blue, or green, or is hysterically running around with signs about something. Mad ideologies from antifa to alt-right and all things in-between. There are dozens– maybe hundreds– of flavors of Marxism alone, whether Maoist, Leninist, Stalinist, Shigalovian, Trotskyite, Fabian (not the 50’s rock star); social democrat or democratic socialist; mixed with scores of identities of the academic pomo crowd– and at least as many varieties on the right. Cue the propaganda– the bots and printing presses are working overtime.

Far be it for us to miss a trend– so we’ve started our own movement. We reject ALL political cults and sects and invite those seeking change, dissatisfied with things as-they-are, the status quo, the Establishment, the established order and alternatives to the established order, cable and network news shows all of them as well as BBC propaganda biopics about queens and history dramas about Vikings, to unite together under our banner of POP LIT.

yellowpop

OUR FOUR-POINT PROGRAM

1.)  We’re not a party but we like to party.

2.)  Ideologues are androids.

3.)  The only revolution that matters is the revolution of art. (The word art used broadly.)

4.)  The way to access the creativity of the universe is by being creative.

The only requirement to join our movement is that you enjoy reading.

(Send your writings and paintings to us. If we like them we’ll use them.)

-Karl and Kathleen
****
(Featured art: “Composition with Two Figures” by Heinrich Campendonk.)

 

January 2017: Month of Protest?

Essay

Protests! Everywhere we turn, everywhere we look we find protests layered upon protests.

It’s nothing new. The imperative, the incentive, the energy for demonstrating in the streets and elsewhere has occurred before, notably in the 1960’s and 70’s. To present perspective and insight to this month’s events, we present an excerpt, “Hit the Road Mac,” from a memoir by Detroit-area writer Gary McDonald. The excerpt covers Gary’s involvement in protests more than forty years ago, when society seemed in even more upheaval than it does now. His narrative only begins with anti-war protests– moving on to cover other aspects of that era’s revolutionary changes; changes which surprise him. You’ll find this personal history fascinating. Perhaps revealing.

“What’s that all about,” I asked, scooting close enough to smell the lemon oil in her blonde streaked hair.

There was a tall scruffy guy with a megaphone drumming up a crowd in the plaza in front of her.

“Nixon’s bombing Cambodia now and that guy’s right, that’s total bullshit,” she said looking back and proved the rest of the theorem; she was an absolute doll. A bit young but still more woman than girl and so good looking she could have started another Trojan War.

***

For words by Bruce Dale Wise which look at political turmoil circa 2017– or, circa NOW– read this poem at our Fun Pop Poetry feature, part of our ever-morphing Interactive blog.

The Serpent’s Wink

Populist Fiction

How many stories give a sense of living in history?

Our new tale does. Read Nathaniel Heely’s “The Serpent’s Wink,” in which main character Andrew Schulden is caught amid financial manipulations, media noise and street protests– the chaos of the contemporary world.

“I’m fucking helping people here.” Matranga’s voice interrupted, “I’m really really trying to at least and,” that was snot, flecked with snowflakes again, now tripping down his lip, “and people—my own goddamn friends—are calling me crooks! Like making money was something I did wrong!”