Review of Paul Zits’ “I Wish I Could Be Peter Falk”

Paul Zits opens this collection with the
perfect dedication: “for Me (& Ryan Gosling).” And it is. I Wish I Could Be Peter Falk is for Zits, for Gosling, and for any man who feels commodified and evaluated for their masculinity. It is a sarcastic—perhaps bitter—reflection, not of a man who feels unsuccessful in love or identity, but of a man who is cynical toward his “successes.” The result is a strange and refreshing take, a set of journal entries that remain honest even through self-grandiosity and paranoia. The narrator is unmistakable, inseparable from Zits through tone and language, and the consistency of voice throughout the collection lends authenticity to its message. There is no distance in I Wish I Could be Peter Falk.

This is not to say that the book is entirely self-focused. Perhaps one of the most interesting parallels in the collection is in comparing the way the narrator sees his significant others versus how he sees himself. Through others, Zits makes heavy-handed use of metaphor and simile, drawing from obscure yet feasible connections and painting unique imagery. “If she were a millipede” is a perfect example:

She is in a state
of permanent visibility.
She is going for something
between a kitten
and a beheading.

Today I’d like to nudge her
with a glass stick.
She is as delicate
as a mad bomber.

The complexity of “she” is emphasized through the contrasting and specific comparisons. The same depth is given to relationships between the narrator and his partners; in “No wider than a pinstripe,” he writes, “the space between us / no wider than a pinstripe, / skinny, like a blink.”

By comparison, the narrator’s self-description seems almost vain or basic. For example, while his partner is “between a kitten / and a beheading,” Zits himself has simple “catlike whiskers / and glowering eyes;” while she is “as delicate / as a mad bomber,” Zits has a “green nylon bomber / from Prada.” This contrast shows the ever-present danger of viewing one’s self as a product—an item to compare and perfect— and it’s one of the reasons these poems work so well as a collection. Otherwise, a reader might not notice the reoccurring use of women in the narrator’s life describing him for him (“[y]ou have the perfect / Canadian pores”) or evaluating his style (“[s]he wants my watch face / made out of meteorite”); or said reader might not notice that the narrator often reflects on himself through his image in the mirror (“[l]ooking in the mirror / is like seeing a porn film / come on by mistake”). Those close to the narrator are infinite and unpredictable, but the narrator himself is shown under a shallow, cynical lens.

I Wish I Could Be Peter Falk is a collection steeped in subtext. It’s as if Zits is asking the reader, “Look, come see what I’ve created,” nodding not to the crafting of the poems but to the molding of his own self. This is Zits, this is Gosling; this is a man created while carefully considering the women, the mirrors, the drones, and even the Google Images watching along the way.