These also seemed to fail, but in ways that felt more true. Then the reverse was exercised, let’s try to write a poem that works on leaving a single thing out. How do you write a poem that contains all of the world and more inside a sonnet length piece? So I sat down and failed every time I composed such a poem. I think I was first interested in writing poems that held everything inside them. Noah Falck: Oh man, I love that Strand poem.

I was somewhat reminded of the lines “In a field/I am the absence/of field…Wherever I am/I am what is missing” from Mark Strand’s well-known poem “ Keeping Things Whole.” Did the premise of the book come hard-earned or was it one you simply sat down and started writing within? The poems are enacted via what isn’t there - “Poem Excluding the Metric System,” “Poem Excluding Religion,” etc. Jeff Alessandrelli: I’m curious how the conceit of Exclusions came about. in-person readings, and his hopes (literary and otherwise) for the Multitudinousness.) Below I asked Falck about the central premise of Exclusions,

(And what that necessary “thing” isĬhanges from poem to poem the brevity of the book paradoxically expands its Poems that have been pared to the proverbial bone, excluding (yep) everythingĮxcept the sheer necessity of the thing. Comprised of 55Ĭompact poems, one poem to a page, Exclusions is short for aĬontemporary poetry volume, but therein lies its appeal as well.

Collection Exclusions fairly quickly, but that’s notīecause it’s an insignificant book-the opposite, actually.

Noah falck silo city