Todd Boss is an award-winning American producer, writer, and innovator. His vision is to make the world more poetic. His non-traditional projects exhibit elegance of expression, simplicity of execution, accessibility, and multimedia collaborations. Todd's four poetry collections are published by W. W. Norton & Co. He has an MFA in Poetry from the University of Alaska-Anchorage. Todd's poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, National Public Radio, The London Times, American Poetry Review, Georgia Review, New England Review, The Sun, Best American Poetry, and many anthologies. His poetry has been recognized with Prairie Schooner's Glenna Luschei Prize, Virginia Quarterly Review's Balch Prize, the Minnesota Book Award, the Midwest Booksellers' Choice Award, various fellowships, and eleven Pushcart nominations. Todd grew up on an 80-acre cattle farm in Wisconsin and attended St. Olaf College and the University of Alaska–Anchorage. In 2018, he sold all his possessions and quit his lease. A nomad, he has since circled the globe on a series of 30 consecutive house-sits and dozens of short term rentals, most recently in Page AZ, Austin TX, Long Beach CA, and Bozeman MT.
He joins us to share his words, discuss poetry, and take questions.
Why Empty Barber Shops Draw Me, I Don’t Know
—it’s romantic, I
end up snapping
photos through the
windows: chair
convened there by
chair, by chair,
mirrored, clean,
someone the night
before having
swept up all the
cut hair, light
streaming in from
the street printing
whatever’s on the
glass backwards
onto the floor, the
CLOSED sign askew
in the door. We do
want community,
don’t we, but we also
don’t, we want to be
held close & left
alone, 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
