Todd Boss first came to my attention several years back when he was making video poems. At the time, I was editing "Shape of a Box: The First YouTube Literary Magazine." I never had a chance to feature Todd's work in my magazine, but his rhythmic style of writing really suited itself well to performance venues such as video. What, therefore, would I think of his work in printed form?

I can now answer that question after reading his newest collection of poems titled "Pitch." Pitch is a word with many denotations and connotations which (except for baseball) Boss makes good use of throughout this book where there are literal instruments (primarily piano) addressed, but where Boss also tries out different tones, textures within the poems themselves.

Reading this collection made me think of buying my first cassette tape (I know I am dating myself a bit with that reference). I often picked up an album because of one particular song. There were always other tracks on the album that weren't quite what I was looking for, but I still enjoyed having the collection together as a whole. This is how I felt reading "Pitch." Not ever poem is one I found myself going back to re-read because maybe they did use a bit too much word play (slant rhymes, repetitions etc) but there were a wealth of poems that kept me coming back for how much fun they had with the sounds of words within a free verse writing style.

One of my favorites is "Blind" where Boss throws out some dark humor as he writes, "One day the doctor tells you that you're blind / to the truth. . . . Truth is a wave-/ length in the spectrum you're unable to detect."

That's just a taste, or perhaps I should say, a note. You should find a few more samples (chords) and then pick up a copy for yourself to see which track becomes your favorite.