Platform

by Rodrigo Toscano

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).

Genres: Poetry

232 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2003

Reviews

[Whtvrs · Rating 4 out of 5]

Think this might be his best

[C.A. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Terrific in every sense! When Toscano says,


"feel out
the state
of aesthetic"


you know he's NOT just talking about the political and economic tastes of the repressive state which the poem engages, but also the poetry itself, very much so. A big mean book of poems, and you know, and feel Toscano making form his own way from page and poem to page and poem.


"Yr. son's liberal widetry department
deserved, no, was destined for:
a make-over, but around a different
social axis (a near finite set of substantive pointer nouns)"


There were a few books I wanted to reread this summer, give another close read, and this is one of them, and it's the kind of book, so dense, so FULL, you can read it again and again and hear new things every single time.

CAConrad
http://CAConrad.blogspot.com