Road Signs and Hobo Marks

CyberWit, 2020

Lois Parker Edstrom

In her brilliantly crafted new collection, Lois Parker Edstrom, transports her lucky readers from the relative affluence of 21st century America and places them in the middle of the Great Depression (1930-1940). This is the era of the ‘Hobo.’ These scruffy men (sometimes entire families) road the rails and combed the countryside for work. In the midst of no work, no money and no prospects, hobos developed a unique set of signs or markings. Through meticulous research, coupled with an obvious love for those disenfranchised through no fault of their own, Edstrom writes poems that describe and develop each sign and the specialized communication conveyed through them. You won’t want to skip over a single poem in, Road Signs and Hobo Marks.

Lois Parker Edstrom never disappoints, and in Road Signs and Hobo Marks, her masterful craft ignites our sense of connection to other times and places. Readers of Road Signs and Hobo Marks are “…embedded in light/that slants through shuttered forests/shimmers/over the river’s smocked surface…” Travelers met in these shimmering worlds, bring us to an understanding of voices we never knew or we thought lost…we want to stay here where “A barn cat curls at your feet wanting/only the comfort of a warm body.”

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