Yellowrocket

Yellowrocket by Todd Boss, reviewed by Linwood Rumney

Reading Todd Boss’ first solo collection of poetry is a strange sort of catharsis for those of us wary of poetry’s commodification at the hands of writers increasingly predisposed to careerism. In this lengthy book, Boss manages to break most of the standard workshop rules, with inspired and inspiring results.

Such short lines aren’t supposed to work so well for narration. But they do, as in the title poem: “Never buy a farm / in winter. For years, / my mother stood / by my father’s side / in thickets choked / with tractor parts / and bedcoil and / cried.”

Pure rhyme isn’t supposed to delight and amaze the savvy and cynical 21st century reader. But it does, as in the idiosyncratically lineated “The Wallpaper:” “Our floors have gotten / over you, so they / claim / and claim. / The windows / clearly feel the same.” Or when, in my favorite poem, “Wood Burning,” the poet inhabits his father’s perspective through the writer’s obsession with language: “[...] To / my father, season / is a verb, a reason / not to disturb one / cord or another.”

Drama and humor aren’t supposed to work so well together. But, once again, they do, as when the when the speaker of “Why I’ll Never Be an Artist” lambastes his mother’s clichéd accusation that he’ll never be an artist because he hasn’t suffered enough, but then turns, with complete ridicule and empathy, to present her suffering as “a light too lonely not to recognize.”

Boss makes the expected unexpected again. He reminds jaded readers what they liked about poetry to begin with. Namely, words that sound alike are cool. Language is a weird and wild place, and it’s the first place we crawl around in. And poetry, Boss shows us, still has a lot of fun and serious work to do.

Yellowrocket by Todd Boss

W.W. Norton & Company, 2008, 121 pages, $23.95