FROM THE EDITOR

HANNAH ARENDT ONCE SAID that "the common element connecting art and politics is that they are both phenomena of the public world." What that public world is, is constantly changing. It is what we make it. It is our arguments, our agreements, our political quarrels, our changing laws and changing trends. In the pages of Radical Society we try to bring both art and politics together to help explain what that public world is and who we are in it.

In this issue Morgan Meis takes a trip to Cuba and writes a travelogue not only of the country but also of history itself. "Some time ago communists wanted to end history by beginning it," Meis writes. Today in Havana he finds that "Cuba is still waiting for something, still preserves itself in an anticipation that makes the whole world here pause....The sky is gray and the buildings are blue, yellow, pink...but they are dying too. How can a building die, a neighborhood die?"

Anaya Mukherjea explores the realities of a world grown accustomed to death in her article on the global AIDS epidemic. "Like with all outbreaks, we tend to think in terms of populations and safe zones much more so than in terms of the impact on individual lives and communities."

To add to this conversation about our common world we have invited Catherine Wagner to join us as poetry editor. Wagner's first book of poems, Miss America, was published by Fence Books. Another book, Macular Hole, is forthcoming from the same publisher in March 2004. This issue marks her stirring debut as poetry editor.