The Book of Joel is a poetic biography of Joel Fallon, a well-loved San Francisco Bay Area poet who spent the last years of his life in Benicia, helping to establish a legacy and tradition of poetry. This collection captures Joel’s keen sense of observation, sense of humor, strong opinions, and lust for life as he embraces the fullness of his world and crafts his poetic legacy.

By Bruce Moody, Special to the Herald

Poems are silent. They may have what is called “a voice,” and these have their voice. But these particular poems have a voice wider than just their voice, a voice that protects and delivers them like the firm shell of a nut.

In the case of The Book Of Joel, it’s a very big nut. Inside their personality, their generosity, are poems full of fun. Fun at the peak of and making fun of its own masculinity. Here is testosterone in the most agreeable, abundant, admirable, and delicate sense of the term.

Somewhere in these poems of military life, love life, and life itself is the decision, taken young, that to write poetry is a proper occupation for a grown man, indeed that to write poems carefully, daringly, honestly, is one good way for a male to grow up.

In their vigor, in their rash exploration of song, their inner loyalty, their bumptious reversals of bumptiousness, in the somersault wit of these poems, is a texture as easy to enjoy as to lay one’s hand on the reassuring and living bark of a good strong tree.

Sometimes one loves what one cannot share. Perhaps it is too private. Perhaps because it is too arcane. Perhaps because it is poetry.

It is possible to set all these good reasons aside and make of The Book Of Joel a gift for anyone old enough to read and reread good work. It has that rare gem on its finger that gives it the common touch. Its poems are accessible — the humor of their excellence married to the grace of a worthwhile popularity.

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