Hivestruck

by Vincent Toro

Vincent Toro’s third collection of poetry is a work of Latinxfuturism that confronts the enigmatic and paradoxical relationship human beings have with technology. The poems are a tapestry of meditations on social media and surveillance culture, satires on science fiction and the space race, interrogations of artificial intelligence, cyborg economics, and biohacking, and tributes to women and queer and BIPOC people who have contributed and are contributing to human survival and progress in a technology obsessed world.

Genres: Poetry

128 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 6, 2024

About the author

Vincent Toro is a Puerto Rican poet, playwright, and professor. He is the author of two previous poetry collections: Tertulia and Stereo.Island.Mosaic., which won the Poetry Society of America’s Norma Farber First Book Award. He is a recipient of the Caribbean Writer’s Cecile deJongh Literary Prize, the Spanish Repertory Theater’s Nuestras Voces Playwriting Award, a Poets House Emerging Poets Fellowship, a New York State Council on the Arts Fellowship in Poetry, and a New Jersey State Council on the Arts Individual Artist Fellowship for poetry. His poetry and prose have been published in dozens of magazines and journals and have been anthologized in Chorus: A Literary Mixtape, by Saul Williams, Puerto Rico en Mi Corazón, Best American Experimental Writing 2015, Até Mais: Latinx Futures, and The Breakbeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNext. He is an assistant professor of English at Rider University, a Dodge Foundation poet, and a contributing editor for Kweli Journal.

Reviews

[Miss✧Pickypants ᓚᘏᗢ · Rating 3 out of 5]

tech poetry full of
coding, 10101100s, sci-fi, ai
scrolling, swiping, computers, computer
and hal
nerd poets will enjoy

[Nicki · Rating 5 out of 5]

I listened to the audiobook. It was the first time I listened to a poetry collection in audio— I didn’t even know it was possible.

Vincent Toro is a talented voice, from speaking in slow robotic tones, in a fast pace that resembles rap, and melodious sentences. It would be a waste to miss out on the audiobook, but the poems alone are worth it.

You’ll get internet culture, science fiction, Puerto Rican culture and history, feminism and everything in between. These poems are something new, I would personally call it something like poetic sci-fi or electric verses. Every poem speaks to you, from references to Blade Runner to history and imagery. If you’re a Gen z, you’re gonna point at the words and say ‘they said that!’.

Wish I had better words. But I can’t emphasis enough how amazing these poems are, much less how glorious the audiobook is. Not only does he write of his own experiences, but of women (especially bipoc) and children who are growing up in the digital age.

The dictionary result of ‘underrated’. I don’t even write reviews but for these poems, I will. It’s the least I can do for the wonderful experience (and for being available on Spotify Premium). I’ll have to get to their other works when I have the time

[Jamie · Rating 1 out of 5]

Opens with something similar to the 22 Jump Street poetry scene; doesn’t get much better.

[Patricia N. McLaughlin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Five-star fabulous! This astonishingly intelligent collection is comprised of a series of ruminations about social media and surveillance culture; satires of science fiction films and the laughable quest to conquer space; interrogations of the questionable “intelligence” of AI; reportage on the bankruptcy of cyborg economics; and the hubris of biohacking. The collection also includes tributes to the women, queer folk, and BIPOC individuals who have made significant contributions to the survival and evolutionary advancement of the human species in the face of the existential threats of the Technocene.


Favorite Poems:
“such acceleration produces fusion.”
“!Decimas”
“St[r]atus Updates”
“Content Moderator’s Lament”
“Bot Fantasia : Forever Ada”
“The Lamentation of Bartolo 9000”
“Cybermujeres : Moore’s Law Poems”
“!Zuihitsu of the Technocene [Beta Version]”
“[Selfie stuck filter junky.]”
“[Zooified.]”
“[Oye. Our abuelas are weeping.]”
“[I repeat:]”
“[Dear difference engine]”
“[Always need to tell my machine]”
“[This Man Machine caged in VALIS sim-being paranoia: am I real or robot?]”
“[Reckon us belief engines]”
“[Como agua.]”
“Syntrophic Ballad with Stelarc”
“Memexodus”
“!Ekphrastic of Bruce McCandless’s Untethered Space Walk [and of Every Sci-Fi Film Ever]”
“Ofrenda for the Arecibo Observatory”
“Milagros Dreams of Cybersyn [A Moore’s Law Epic]”
“‘At Age 28, Chilean Astronomer Maritza Soto Has Already Discovered Three Planets’”
“!Quatrains in Revolt / Bot Bars for Artificial MCs”
“!Haibuns of the Technocene : Praxislas”

[Nikki · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75/5
Cool collection of poetry
“Lithium is stripped from Bolivia’s hillsides so twenty something’s in Seattle can access tinder” is an amazing line, as is the term “panopticonfederacy”

[William Bookman III]

This is my style of poetry. Playful, political, and urban!

[Haley Prim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beautiful, but many poems were so abstract that I just felt lost. You need a lot of knowledge about programmers and a very dense vocabulary to not have to look up multiple names/words per poem. Some people may like having to research to decipher a meaning, but since it happened so much, I found it disorientating.

Favorite poems:
- “such acceleration produces fusion”
- The Lamentation of Bartolo 9000
- “At Age 28, Chilean Astronomer Maritza Soto Has Already Discovered Three Planets”
- iHaibuns of the Technocene: Praxislas

[Rhonda Hankins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Saying this is a book of poetry does not do it justice.

It is a book containing approximately four to five million ideas and each one is presented in such an original away as to multiply the result.

These poems come alive as you read them. The format of a lot of them encourages the fluidity, reinforces the messaging, makes the words jump.

But the one poem that knocked me out was The Lamentation of Bartolo 9000.

This is a book worth having on your shelves. It's more than a book really, it's a conversation with a great friend. It pairs well with some jazz music.