Rodrigo Toscano

Dear Friends! My newest book is now available from Omnidawn Books. The book is written in Late Classical Toscanoese. Several discerning, freaked out, culturally hopeful people have noted the texts are reasonably intelligible to readers proficient in Late Empire American English. press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book… * WHITMAN. CANNONBALL. PUEBLA. is a collection of poetic fables that aim to engage the emerging field of Globo-Poetics through Hispano-Americano lenses. Given the current global crises between civilizational states, and the generalized cultural destabilization manifesting across mass popular culture and the domain of literature itself. WHITMAN. CANNONBALL. PUEBLA. was written with the aim of invigorating a deep conversation about how the United States might be able to adapt to a wider hemispheric consciousness, where the Anglo-Capitalist outlook is tempered if not subsumed by a Greater Americas “Salamanca Humanism”, which was the basis for the 1948 United Nations declaration of Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The book is divided into four sections: MAIORIS HISPANIAE, a set of ten unapologetically assertive political poems that develop the idea of a Greater Americas as hinging on a hard negotiation between Anglo and Hispano values and interests towards a higher resolution. IMPERIUM, nine explorative poems that engage the dimensions of a catastrophic Anglo-American imperialism (simultaneously in resurgence and decline) across continents. HUMANITAS, nine early Post-Empire fables meant to instill a stoic, yet cheery intellectual disposition in the midst of crises. ARTIFICIA NATIONALIS (“National Artifacts”), ten Late-Empire quirky allegories on the historical consciousness of a media over-saturated people who live addled yet fundamentally earnest lives.

Two sonnets, "Aliens 8" and "Normies", from Salvage Nation: 100 Sonnets (Winter Editions, fall 2026). ghostharmonics.com/magazine/issue…

Fresh out of high school, I went to work for a computer manufacturing plant. I made motherboards. I wore astronaut-like suits. It was grueling. Anyway, that's where I learned the word, "NAND", a digital logic concept. Alas, here's a sonnet by that name. summersetreview.org/26spring/tosca…

"Charms" from upcoming Salvage Nation: 100 sonnets. Written in 10-syllable lines. Form comes naturally to me, given my lifelong study of Bach's methods of developing multiple lines of inquiry and expression. It's a meditation on remaining human in the face of ceaseless violence.

"These Lands" from upcoming Salvage Nation: 100 sonnets (Winter Editions, 2026). A desire to capture some fleeting moments of life in order to share them with people of "good will", those striving to not be captured by either propaganda nor by escapism. benningtonreview.org/fifteen-toscano

For poets like myself unaffiliated to a university, for whom AWP is out of pocket, a pause here to reflect on outrageous registration fees, exorbitant hotel costs, airlines, price of Ubers to readings, etc. Add poverty galore in Baltimore. It's a lot, y'all, to just, woo-hoo!

Poetry in the U.S. ranges from being a pure product of higher education institutions to indy (less commodified) outputs. But they're both productivist endeavors. And so we can talk (straight or slantly) about poets and industrial relations, and about alienation.

Superfluous, presumptuous, indulgent, vain...this is what a lot of non-poet people think of our practices. The ephemerality of it all reminds them of their own superfluous, vain endeavors in the world. We're bent on riding out transformations, passionate about giving them form.

These decasyllabic sonnets in the new issue of Waxwing. I wrote one a day for 100 days straight. Salvage Nation: 100 sonnets will be published in the fall of 2026 by Winter Editions. waxwingmag.org/items/issue35/…

The poets that the national institutions are elevating to be the public face of American Poetry are ill-equipped for this moment in history. Another way to look at it is they're plenty well equipped to act as the cultural attachés of a destructive, predatory, decaying empire.

AWP 2026 is fast approaching. Literary endeavors will be validating literary endeavors. That, we can count on. But those endeavors owe everything to extra-literary forces in the world. As always, it will be interesting to see how much of those forces get play there. And how.

"What's happening?" The American-led World Order, its propaganda and official poetries are in full decomposition mode. Empire Center Star System poet structures are buckling. The New Orleans Poetry Festival is flourishing in hundreds of new directions. No fees. No chaff.

The unstated rule of mainstream journals: No ideological contradictions in the production of Contemporary American Poetry are to be expressed in any way. Poems, however, can rock out on quarks, quasars, extraterrestrial sex habits, and of course, individual salvation.

Also watching poets who've spent their lives appeasing bourgeois cultural institutions for big paybacks. They post their indignation at the current state of affairs while on 2-4 week tours, spewing the same old me-centered poetics, hogging up bandwidth, hawking redemption.

@InfraHaz A poet is born!

The only reason theres such a heightened presence of ICE in Minnesota is because retard conservaboomer social media slop driven by bot farms about Somalis made the retard administration think it would be appeasing the retard cattle X bots via 'show of force' PR stunts.

"Factoids", a sonnet from my fall 2026 book, Salvage Nation. This piece, like many in the collection, explores the dynamic relationship between content and form. Dialectical thinking plays a role even through the most speculative of inquiries. sixthfinch.com/toscano2.html?…

@ACP_California "We must, through deepening reform, perfecting policies and completing mechanisms, create a vivid dimension for the incessant production of excellent works and emergence of talent."

Last week, ACP California held a special theory reading session focused on art and media as tools of revolutionary outreach. Comrades met at a local café and read “Talk at Yenan Forum on Culture and Literature” by Mao Zedong and “New Impulses for Artistic Expression” by Che Guevara, stopping to discuss the readings’ application to the tasks we currently face. The communists of America are improving themselves in every facet possible. Join TODAY at acp.us/join

@biancastone knorke

A longing For disintegration constantly comes. Hölderlin (I dont have the original reference. I live my life, it seems, in a blizzard of fragments disconnected from sources, ungathered Bury me in my notes!) (I look forward to seeing Hölderlinturm when I go to Germany in June)

@mtrlgrrrl !Un abrazote! Estamos en linea por la defensa de Hispano América. En contra del imperio imperialista anglosajón. ✊

it's extremely strange to see petro become king of the internet bc my dad was part of petro's political party, is the same age, and strongly shares the same sensibilities to an almost uncanny degree so every time i log on, it feels like the internet is my dad maxxing. it's just-

@armesillaconde por allí va ... pero lo que falta es lucidez en la mente de los mexicanos en EEUU. Eso es clave. Y falta conversación (análisis) de la situación.

Ojalá ;)

American poets about to go ape shit! Hunkering in the dialectic between classes, nations, and empires. Culture oozing from that dialectical clamor. Literature, a subset of culture, poetry, a subset of literature. At the end of the day, *prized* unruly child of the whole shebang.