Hi-Density Politics

Author: Urayoán Noel

Publisher: BlazeVOX (2011)

"In Hi-Density Politics, Urayoán Noel celebrates the 'composite of elsewheres' that make us whole. Allowing the shift of language its living immersion through the electric barrio, this book tunes into the many frequencies that 're-site the body' as observed by the 'mock-spañol' sapien, the layered strata rife with invention. Let's move, these pages say, let's breathe the city through our body. With episodic density, Noel whirls us through an extravagant journey, proposing a newly charged coda for closeness."

–Edwin Torres

"Urayoán Noel’s plurilingual, polyphonic, & polymorphous text works are images are performance scores are records of poetry actions are homophonic translations are poems are homages to some of Latin America and the Caribbean’s greatest innovators. Their language is a haunted one. Throughout Noel’s body of work the ghost of Spanish unsettles the English language, disrupting its expansionist ambitions. Ditto for the specter of English in the Spanish lines. The only expansionism here pertains to the field of poetry, and we’re all the luckier for it." 

–Mónica de la Torre

"In Hi-Density Politics, Urayoán Noel hurls himself out of himself towards what actually 'happens' in the world—deep ideological dalliance with A = not-A’s, B’s = C’s. As mediator 'between cultures,' mashing up newly found 'passions' to cultural funk-outs, he is ever the exacerbationist (trozos de 'intención' —micro choques en colliders de jour). But not just for himself (!) Go-ahead here is by community (dímelo)—a solid push back on repressive hegemonies. The puckish poetic reminds one of Brecht’s Die Hauspostille (“Manual of Piety”). The we-could-pull-the-plug-on-all-this-culture-art-stuff-at-any-time—has been ghoulish kin to cultural-political artists since then. Thus, this book is also a 'teaching' of our un-teachable busted capitalist moment. And marvelously, we feel freedom-potential in Hi-Density Politics. Noel rattles the 'big other' symbolic order just long enough for the signs to slink out from under it, unbridled, furiously cute, in maximalist rhythms."

–Rodrigo Toscano