Happy to announce my 13th full-length collection: Salvage Nation: 100 Sonnets (Winter Editions, 2026). Publication Date: November 5, 2026. Ready for pre-order now. wintereditions.net/home/salv…...

Thanks so much Amenia Free Review for taking a chance on "American Century" and "Nation Peddlers" from Salvage Nation: 100 Sonnets (Winter Editions, 2026). The book can be ordered now at the Winter Editions website. ameniafreereview.site/pages/…

Are Diaspora Poetics tapped out in the U.S.? They've been failing at articulating what classes they stand with in the "host" nation. Perhaps only a full-blown socialist turn can revive them. But the Cultural Managerial Class that promotes them is precisely there to stop that.

For me, when assessing young poetic abilities, what I'm mainly looking for is a sense of - let's say, raw knack for words. But more than that, I'm looking for their sense of history. Not facts and tales of the past, but how history is presently moving through their very lines.

From Salvage Nation: 100 Sonnets. "Europa" was penned a year ago. Grappling with historical contradictions back then set the poem up to, as it were, peek into the future. Yeah, poetry can do that, especially when honing to historical materialist lenses. ballastjournal.com/rodrigo-t…

If I were judging a contest: "I want to see poetries that parse forms of social alienation with a stoic wit. I want to know your sense of geopolitical landscapes. I want you to stop being phobic about your industrial existence. And please, no cheap-ass redemptions of yourself."

One main feature of American Institutional poetry is its lack of hard-won humor. Hard-won humor is an intellectual wit that's wrenched from bottled up social contradictions. Institutional poets' official tasks revolve around enforcing themes of "serious" individualist redemption.

Greetings friends in who live in the northwest. The 10th anniversary of the Cascadia Poetry Festival begins tomorrow. I'll be there. I hope to see you. cascadiapoeticslab.org/2026-…

Do we need any more purveyors of the miraculousness of poetry? Or do we want to see more fit and agile poetics meeting the historical moment we're living in? As American cultural dominance crumbles before the world, are we to be left with just personal salvation poetry?

Almost in concert, the major poetry institutions decide who is to be elevated based on absorbable sociological categories (actual poetics comes second). Collectively, these construct a single Liberal Capitalist Subject that dutifully avoids class struggle. C'est là, c'est tout.

Seriously though, the vast majority of my poems are not sonnets. I only turn to the sonnet when brevity in argumentation is what I'm after. That said, here's another one. This one is in 12-syllable lines, an experiment. Takes more wind to belt it out. swiftslitmag.com/rodrigo-tos…

Thank you so much Tod Edgerton for publishing these poems in the very first issue of What Most Vividly. Salvage Nation: 100 Sonnets (Winter Editions, 2026) can now be ordered online. Link in my bio profile. whatmostvividly.com/journal-…

Here's a review of Salvage Nation by Greg Bem for North of Oxford magazine, actually the very first one. northofoxford.wordpress.com/… Salvage Nation will officially be out during the first week of November, but can be pre-ordered now. wintereditions.net/home/salv…

Here's an interview about my formative years in San Diego and how poetry scenes evolve over time due to changing social-material conditions, plus two remembrances of Cole Heinowitz and Fanny Howe. peellit.com/issue3/3-2-Rodri…

Thank you 128 Lit for publishing "Donuts", a poem from my new book, Salvage Nation: 100 Sonnets (Winter Editions, November 2026). Every single verse line (1, 400) in this collection is exactly ten syllables. Link to book in pinned post. 128lit.org/toscano

Confronting alienation from the means of production by highlighting constraints (from lived-life structures to aesthetics), can avail the blurry outlines of "freedom" (if Freiheit figures into your system of thought). But feigning direct access to it, just tells us you're a hack.

I don't need poets playing at being political pundits on this app, I need to see their poetic works with the cultural-ideological downstream effects of their alleged politics skillfully woven in there. But alas, it's mainly "hot take" tweets paired with flat, normie poetry.

Dialectical materialist poetics lives by engaging ideological contradiction. The logic, the wit, the quirkiness of it flows from there. It is implicitly an affront to slop academic liberalism and its "I"-centered ritualisms. It has fresh surge potential, and thus, enemies galore.

Three from Salvage Nation: 100 Sonnets (pre-order from Winter Editions, November, 2026) (flip phone for best viewing) bulbregion.com/Three-Poems-b…