Platform - Softcover

Toscano, Rodrigo

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1891190156 ISBN 13: 9781891190155

Publisher: Atelos, 2003

Synopsis

Poetry. Rodrigo Toscano's PLATFORM is a political one; his writings are predicated on the political conditions of contemporary life. But his work is not (and will never be) predicted by those conditions; indeed, outwitting, unnerving, and outspeaking the forces and figures clinging to control is one of his signal artistic strategies. The work is bitingly inventive and yet delicately meticulous; outrageous, funny, anti-hypocritical, and "unfuckingrightgaggable," PLATFORM is a victory for the political intelligence whose exercise is now, more than ever, a human necessity. Toscano is a nationally influential writer, whose work along the intersections of social and aesthetic activism is adding new dimensions to contemporary poetics. His other two books are THE DISPARITIES and PARTISANS (both available from SPD).

About this title

About the Author

RODRIGO TOSCANO is the author of To Leveling Swerve (2005), Platform (2004), The Disparities (2002) and Partisans (1999). His poetry has appeared in Best American Poetry 2004, War and Peace (2004 & 2007), In the Criminal's Cabinet: An anthology of poetry and fiction (2004), and in McSweeney's "Poets Picking Poets." His polyvocalic pieces, poetics plays, and body-movement poems, and radio pieces have been performed and broadcast widely. His work has been translated into French, German, Italian, and Catalonian. Toscano is originally from Southern California. He works in Manhattan at the Labor Institute, and lives in Brooklyn.

Reviews

Whether picking on the apolitical "new economy" bohemians of trendy Williamsburg, Brooklyn; turning over the tropes and tactics of the teamster's strike against UPS; or rollicking through "A Brief Retrospective of Chump De Ville's Poetic Oeuvre over the Last Decade," Toscano (Partisans) creates a breathtaking poetic proscenium in his third, most accomplished collection. "Some dealers/ expect a more neutral poesy/ taking a less acidic partisan tone" writes Toscano in one of these 27 polemical, satirical assays, and the way such lines draw readers in while simultaneously suggesting they may be part of the problem, is deft, affecting and often extremely funny. Yet paradoxically, the dominant tone is one of a poet conversing maniacally with himself, treating language like the virus Burroughs said it was, while producing a discourse decidedly "public" in its field of reference: "Henry Rollins oracle,/ sound as/ tough turd as always?// [counter pose with other period-marked singer// of inverted affect// from `other' primary/ alimentary/ ideolective// entry-point// multiplexed// `mout']." It works because Toscano's musical sense is flawless throughout this long book and full of mordantly coiled energy, perfectly calibrated to confront a post-Seattle, post-9/11 military-entertainment complex that has learned to absorb revolutionary rhetoric into computer ads. Combining Pound's collage techniques and Brecht's lowbrow street histrionics, this Platform becomes the stage of history on which poets, readers, social actors and workers could all enact their dramas. Taken individually and as comprising a thick whole, the poems return value to moments of macro- and micro-political decision-a decisive salvo against nonrecognition and silence.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Atelos
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1891190156
• ISBN 13: 9781891190155
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 232