X in the Tickseed

From discursive essay-poems to tightly constructed lyrics, Ed Falco's X in the Tickseed examines a world that reveals itself through its mysteries, reflecting upon the ephemeral nature of all things. In the series of poems that bookend the collection, a speaker identified only as X reviews personal history and relationships, speculating, pondering, and questioning in the face of a baffling universe. Peppered between the X poems, artists as varied as Artemisia Gentileschi, Frank O'Connor, and Nick Cave surface, usually in poems posing as essays about their art. Other poems range from explorations of cultural perspective, as in "A Few Words to a Young American Killed in the Tet Offensive," where a war resister addresses a young man of his generation who died in Vietnam, to the often playful "An Alphabet of Things." Throughout, Falco's poems speculate on matters of life and faith, intensified by an awareness of death.

X in the Tickseed is a gorgeous, riveting meditation on memory, mortality, art-making, and the complications of living. Equal parts lyric, narrative, and philosophical, Ed Falco's poems remind us that the world is beautiful and terrible in equal measures." - Erika Meitner

"In its masterful control of language and form, its clarity and layered complexity, this book is itself a work of beauty, one that will last for a long while." - Eric Nelson

"Both smart and heartfelt, these poems are meant to be not nibbled but devoured, again and again." - David Kirby

Ed Falco is the author of a dozen books, including novels, short story collections, and poetry. A recipient of the Robert Penn Warren Prize in Poetry from the Southern Review and the Emily Clark Balch Prize for Fiction from the Virginia Quarterly Review, he teaches in the MFA program in creative writing at Virginia Tech.

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