From Our Soundbooth | March 04, 2008

In this installment of The Missouri Review podcast, we feature the first place and first runner-up entries to the Voice-Only Literature (Poetry) category of our 2007 Audio Competition. Both of these awards go to poems by Todd Boss: “To Wind a Mechanical Toy” (1st place) and “Yellowrocket” (1st runner-up). Both poems are sonically resonant, without being heavy-handed in their music. They are lyrically complex, weaving narrative with a more roving, philosophical strain, so that listening to the poems is a varied experience, with lulls, pauses, crescendos, decrescendos, while also being unified enough to follow aurally.

Todd Boss is the Director of External Affairs at The Playwrights’ Center in Minneapolis. His work appears in Poetry, The New Yorker, Prairie Schooner, Willow Springs, TriQuarterly, and elsewhere. His first collection, Yellowrocket, will be published in 2008 by W.W. Norton and Company. His MFA is from the University of Alaska, Anchorage.