Explosion Rocks Springfield

Explosion Rocks Springfield is an aesthetic appreciation, stern (loving) criticism, and determined re-imagining of several dominant tendencies in American avant-garde poetry of the last decade. The book consists of eighty one-page iterations of the following line: The Friday evening gas explosion in Springfield leveled a strip club next to a day care.

Each iteration consists in analytical-philosophic queries, lyrical diffractions, and paranarrative documentary. Sixteen sub-topic variations appear. Every single word of the primary thematic line is exfoliated, extended, and exploded, multiply, in a fugal structure, seeking the effects of content density, tension, and return. Continual re-figuration of all themata invites the reader to experience a pleasurable engagement with a material transparency that is neither prepackaged ("found") nor fancied from thin air ("inspired").

What is explosion to a slab of drywall?
What is "drywall" exactly?
HEIGH-HO!
Why do people strip?
What is "day care"? Why "day"?
What is night care?
Why daylight why daylight why daylight.
What is "care" exactly?
Gas. Wherefrom gas?

Raised in southern California, experimental poet, playwright, and labor activistRodrigo Toscano is the author of seven collections of poetry including Collapsible Poetics Theater (2008), which was chosen for the National Poetry Series, and Deck of Deeds (2012). His work has been widely translated and anthologized; radio pieces have aired on stations across the country. Toscano works for the Labor Institute in conjunction with the United Steelworkers and the National Institute for Environmental Health Science. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.