X in the Tickseed

From discursive essay-poems to tightly constructed lyrics Ed Falco's <i>X in the Tickseed</i> 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.