Platform

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).

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.