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paper • 96 pages • 15.95
ISBN-13:  978-1-945588-17-4

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Forgive the Body This Failure

Blas Falconer

Blas Falconer’s poem “A man and a woman touched” from Forgive the Body This Failure was featured in The New York Times Magazine.
On Washington Independent Review of Books’ September 2018 Best Books List.

A collection of poems that faces personal losses to explore the human sense of impermanence and to cherish what we must relinquish. 

Engaging the past and the present, these poems attempt to reconcile loss and longing while also seeking to understand our own impermanence. Written in a plain-spoken voice, they are meditative, elegiac and tender.

“Heaven” from Forgive the Body This Failure

How will

I get


there? How

will I ever know how


to get

there, my son


asks, sobbing

suddenly, months


after, if

you don't let


me see

them die.
  • "...Falconer's poems are sparse, beautiful, and breathtaking..."-Victoria Chang
  • "...These arresting poems move with the complex currents of familial relationships, the strains of joy, love, and loss...An exquisite collection!"-Rigoberto González
  • "Growing from youth to maturity means, among other things, becoming reconciled to imperfection. With time and living, the illusion of limitless possibility gives way to an acceptance of inevitable failure and frailty. The poems in Blas Falconer’s third collection, Forgive the Body This Failure, are informed by the deep empathy and generosity of spirit that can come with this acceptance...."Read the full review

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