Salvage Nation: 100 Sonnets

Rodrigo Toscano

Empires 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

Equally critical of a decomposing empire as it is of literary worlds, Salvage Nation 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