Holding Out

Ronald Charles Epstein is a Toronto-based freelance writer and published poet.

Montreal-born poet John L. Falk was best known as a psychology professor
at Rutgers University. His first collection of verse was the successful
Snow and Other Guises.

In this collection, Falk’s poetry is ordered and occasionally rhymed.
Although he may emulate a 19th-century Romantic, he is equally at home
in the garden or strip joint. He uses traditional disciplines to mould a
sensibility shaped by eroticism, attitude, and topicality.

“Woody’s Last One” displays these characteristics as it satirizes
Woody Allen’s controversial marriage to underage sweetheart Soon-Yi
Previn. The poet ridicules “Woody ... With balding heard nestled /
Between taut breasts.” Yet he admits that “I’d do her too, and
screw the sanctimonious respect.” Despite such sexual ambivalence,
this poet may also reach people who remember the artist, not the tabloid
celebrity. They may view the observation “You can’t live with wry
cracks / And deli nosh forever” as more than a reference to Allen’s
neurotic New York Jewishness. In 2005, he released Match Point, a drama
in which he ditched his persona to create a thoroughly British film.
That project may have inspired the previous quotation.

Falk’s sensibility can function as a self-regulating mechanism. Since
his verse is very erotic, “[a] spiked chandelier, swinging / Those
multi-nippled tits” may seem to be excessive. He does address such
concerns; the poem “I Don’t Want to Hear It” is a dismissal of the
egotistical exhibitionism of a sexually explicit poet.

Falk deconstructs modern trends with critical perception. “Botox
Facial” denounces that cosmetic procedure because it creates a bland
appearance that is at odds with the patient’s true character.

Falk’s poetry may have to earn praise, but it deserves critical
examination.