{"product_id":"toscano-rodrigo-salvage-napb","title":"[11\/05\/26] Toscano, Rodrigo: Salvage Nation","description":"\u003cp\u003eWinter Editions, paperback\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePublication Date: November 5, 2026\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePublisher Marketing: \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn a tour-de-force of one hundred sonnets, Rodrigo Toscano blends geopolitical critique with the challenges of media-saturated life, offering a sharp, sustaining read for those overwhelmed by the twenty-first century’s complexities. Renowned for his contrapuntally rich texts, in his thirteenth book of poetry, Toscano navigates the nuances of lived experiences filtered through volatile national realities, all the while remaining open to premonitions of cosmic existence. Divided into four equal sections of twenty-five sonnets (each composed with fourteen ten-syllable lines), \u003cem\u003eSalvage Nation\u003c\/em\u003e voices the muted moments of the present to reveal the historical contradictions shaping our future, and suggest that national regeneration can lead to an international flourishing of alternative possibilities.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIdeally, a sonnet sequence both rebuilds and contains a world in a succession of small spaces. Traditionally, these spaces have constituted small worlds suggesting a larger world. Rodrigo Toscano’s \u003cem\u003eSalvage Nation: 100 Sonnets\u003c\/em\u003e constitutes a large world, and again and again suggests its new, unnatural, troubling smallness. There is a fugal vision to these sonnets, and a fugal music that connects them—but they are also, and often, tremendously funny, and are as good as any sonnets being written today. —Shane McCrae\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEmpires decline; the sonnet persists. Here, in the form of salvaged packaging for the most unsparing of critiques. Around the time I was reading Toscano’s incisive sonnets, I encountered, on two separate occasions, vans from Roman Empire Logistics handling Amazon dropoffs. Call it a vibe thing. Or a spin on that old adage about tragedy followed by comedy, even though it’s all volta now. As the poet reminds us, “some sonnets manage to scamper away […] yet others form a sort of defense line.” Consider yourself recruited. —Mónica de la Torre\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn \u003cem\u003eSalvage Nation\u003c\/em\u003e, sonnets (those well-trodden little songs) become as practical as a nut and bolt, as puissant as a bullet. This collection brazenly fuses homologies of all time, all space, all material: local to global, industry to leisure, history to now. No lyrical masking, no posturing of niceties, just fourteen sharp-toothed, sweet-tongued lines in the reader’s mental blender: ontologies pulverized, made fresh and easy-to-swallow. By dint of Brechtian-channeled forces, here’s a salvage poetics sponging up our deranged zeitgeist as only Toscano can distill it. As the rag-and-bone powers that be are killing us, this pragmatic music and its voltas offer a current spec sheet insisting somewhere, somehow, their plug can be pulled. —Henry Goldkamp\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEqually critical of a decomposing empire as it is of literary worlds, \u003cem\u003eSalvage Nation\u003c\/em\u003e recycles (salvages?) the ruins of the sonnet form to think not about the lyric “I” but instead about collectivity: what that might be, and how poetics might help it happen in a late capitalist context—all the while remaining bristlingly “against, againstish, and part of it.” —Kai Ihns\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Open Books: A Poem Emporium","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45407467372567,"sku":"9781959708230","price":22.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0004\/6497\/7956\/files\/1785753871-900.jpg?v=1786826132","url":"https:\/\/open-books-a-poem-emporium.myshopify.com\/products\/toscano-rodrigo-salvage-napb","provider":"Open Books: A Poem Emporium","version":"1.0","type":"link"}