Someday the Plan of a Town: Poems by Todd Boss

​      Slowly and sporadically, I’ve been dabbling with reading poetry. I’m not organically a modern poetry fan, I find it too freestyled and unrhymed for my liking, too abstract somehow. But this one worked surprisingly well. Surprisingly so. Such a pleasant surprise.
     My selections tend to be quite random – here the main attractor was the story behind the collection, which goes something like this…a few years ago the author left his life (including an apartment, an acrimonious divorce and estranged children) behind and set off to housesit his way across the world. The housesitting gigs were unpaid, but they allowed for a free stay, which is an interesting and original way to travel. And thus, these poems of an unmoored and untethered soul hail from various (distant and otherwise) locales.
      I kind of figured/hoped for more of a travelogue via poems but guess it’s true what they say – wherever you go, there you are. And so, these poems don’t actually have so much to do with physical geography mostly the mental one. The places of loneliness and anger and sudden beauty the author finds himself in. But each one has such a distinct rhythm (and yes, rhymes too), because each one has such a distinct message and mood, they were easy to connect with and enjoy. So there, the cover appeal totally paid off, though it features entirely too many suitcases, for the author said he had only made do with a couple. Very good. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.