SOMEDAY THE PLAN OF A TOWN :: Todd Boss

Following the loss of a 20-year marriage and strained relationships with his children, poet Todd Boss sold all he owned and gave up his Minneapolis apartment ("only half-facetiously writing "Trump" on the "Reason for leaving" line of the Lease Cancellation form). In that grief-stricken state, he traveled the world for two years utilizing a series of thirty housesitting gigs. In each location, he wrote. This collection of poems is a result of that trip, reflecting Todd's emotional difficulties permeated with the essence of the different locations he visited. 

This fascinatingly unique premise, along with superb cover art (which I initially thought was shipping containers and which would have been no less attractive) were all I needed to dive into the collection. It began by sucking me in with Boss's notes on his approach to the book, which was an important foundation to understanding his views. 

I was also drawn in by his summary of the saga, as he was "alternately inhabiting thatched-roof farm-houses, hillside estates, urban apartments, and lush gardens in Berlin, Barcelona, Marrakesh, Singapore, Auckland. Housesitting gigs often came complete with pets or livestock for which I was responsible. I tended sheep from a stone cabin in the Pyrenees. I minded two sleepy cats in a Tuscan villa, a coop full of unruly chickens in London, and a playful puppy on the Gold Coast of Australia."

There were some incredibly lovely moments within the collection. I especially loved the titular piece, a lyrical run-on about finding your place in the world, a dream for everyone who just doesn't feel quite right where they lay their head:

Someday the Plan of a Town--right down to its sidetracks and back alleyways--will match--or so goes the dream--with some identical patch of neural network your rogue thoughts roam in--overlay it like those musculoskeletal transparencies with which anatomy textbooks come bound--and you'll be at home in its dogleg jointwork of cobbled kinks--and your body will resound at every fork, tuning-fork-like--and every road you ever rambled will be re-scrambled to appear to have brought you here, where you fit so perfectly... (Tarifa, Andalucia, Spain)

From my perspective, the most engaging pieces described the essence of Boss's particular surroundings, taking the reader along on some portion of his trek. From Workmen Discarding a Parquet Floor, Vienna:

It's a four-handed band performing the complete works of Beethoven using only wooden castanets in incomplete sets. What once a woman danced across. What once in a sash of sun the cat snoozed afternoons upon. Un-glued, un-patterned, going, gone.

And this, from Why Empty Barber Shops Draw Me, I Don't Know:

...we want to talk when we want to talk & we want sometimes instead to sit quietly while someone touches us all about the head with the edges of a scissoring scissor & the neat teeth of a comb. Small comfort, but lucky for us, the wealthy as well as the poor, that there are a few things left in this old world we still need other people for. (Baltimore, Maryland, USA)

There are also moments that are beautifully-worded knife cuts that reflect Boss's current state. From He Divides his Time Between:

I had a married life before, in a subdivision of peace and war. 

In equal thirds my loved ones ate my heart like a festival roast.

Now my father's son is a ghost, a wisp of smoke, a metaphor.

He divides his time between nothing and much and matters and anymore. (Greenville, South Carolina, USA)

Then there were the pieces that came from what felt like a very dark place. I won't say these works ruined the collection for me, but they somehow tinged those lyrics I enjoyed with their perceived venom. For example:

Fairer The claw marks in my neck long faded, the steam of hate evaporated, attempted identity theft subverted, assets, passwords, passport converted, accusations of assault reversed, two years' court fees reimbursed, restraining orders at last elapsed, libelous campaigns collapsed, attempts to turn my friendships rotten and threats of murder and vengeance forgotten, I'm finally ready--whatever comes next--to reengage the fairer sex.

And, in Men, Then, Maybe, as Boss wonders if he couldn't love or touch a man just as generously as he has women:

Men aren't faultless, oh, I know. Now and then a prick, okay, but let's just say the "fairer" blooms I've picked so far, though lovely, are no prick-less clutch. So, men, then. Maybe. Huh. The hot mechanics may yet be a mystery, but at least I know the parts already. (Auckland, New Zealand) 

This last bit, in a vacuum, I actually love. We can all be pricks, and why are love and touch any different depending on the "mechanics?" But when taken on the heels of the Fairer, it felt more vengeful, a little "fuck women"-ish. Which Boss may be entitled to, and the hurt and disappointment are bound to come out in the words of a poet. I'm not sure why these two hit me wrong. They don't strike me as much now as I reread them as they did initially. Perhaps because we know which woman they are directed at they feel viciously one-sided when we don't know the facts. 

Overall I enjoyed this collection, but mostly so when Boss fell into the first two categories. I love a good evisceration poem, poems of honest hurt and devastation. When they delve into real personal intimate lives, I'm more likely to feel the judgment than the camaraderie.