Tobi Alfier - Classic Does Not Mean Boring

Tobi in Ireland, near the grave of Yeats

What is your wish for your writing? Do you want it to be a commentary on our current times, or do you wish for it to be able to stand on the page long after the drama of current events has moved on to become a paragraph in the back of a history book?  Being “generic” is a way to ensure your work will be timeless, but that does not mean it will be boring.

One of my favorite poems is “When You Are Old” by William Butler Yeats.

       When You Are Old 

       When you are old and grey and full of sleep,

       And nodding by the fire, take down this book,

       And slowly read, and dream of the soft look

       Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

       How many loved your moments of glad grace,

       And loved your beauty with love false or true,

       But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,

       And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

       And bending down beside the glowing bars,

       Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled

       And paced upon the mountains overhead

       And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

This poem was written in 1892. It has stood the test of time and I think it will still be timeless and lovely in 2092.

Does anything date this poem? Not the fire. Electricity had been in homes for over fifteen years. We use fires today for warmth and comfort — the fire in this poem is doing the same.

The first word of each line being capitalized is still used by some poets today. The punctuation is correct. The rhyme is subtle and correct.

Poster courtesy of Writers & Authors

The poem says “take down this book”. It doesn’t name the book.

Did Yeats think about this while he was writing this beautifully unself-conscious, sincere love poem? I don’t know. It is classic. It certainly isn’t boring.

I want my poetry to stand the test of time, but I also like specificity, so this is something I struggle with. I don’t write “he lit a cigarette”, I write “he lit a Marlboro”. I don’t say “she flirted with the guy at the old car show”, I say “she coyly bent her head from side to side/ keeping time with her feet in their ballerina flats/ out in front of the black ’62 Chevy/ belonging to who she would later describe/ as “the hunk in the white t-shirt”.”

Photo by Brigitte Werner

In a hundred years, I doubt anyone will be describing anyone else as a “hunk”. A pack of Marlboros might be relegated to those “do you remember these?” quizzes along with pictures of VCR’s and Brownie cameras. Who knows? I think about this all the time.

Keep this in mind when you write, and be thoughtful. If you write about war, you may want to leave it generic and not specify which war. Likewise Presidents, musicians, television shows, some types of clothing, current political hot issues, and so on.

“Take down this book”…

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Tobi Alfier's most recent collection of poetry is Somewhere, Anywhere, Doesn't Matter Where. She is also co-editor with Jeff Alfier of the San Pedro River Review. Don't miss Tobi's columns on the craft of poetry: insert your email address in the "Follow By Email" box to the right of this article and you'll be notified every time a new article appears.

June 10th Poetry Reading! Jonathan Maule!

Our Non-Profit Status is Official!

Cholla Needles Arts & Literary Library is officially a non-profit organization, and we have been certified by Guidestar with their highest level Platinum Seal Of Approval. Things are happening!

Tobi Alfier - You are the Surgeon

Concision is the Scalpel, 

You are the Surgeon

Have you ever read a poem that really began at the third stanza?  Have you ever written one? Particularly if you write narrative poetry, maybe the first two stanzas HAD to be written to get you to where the poem lives. The trick is to know this, and delete those first couple stanzas before submitting, or publishing.

I have done this, we probably all have. I have missed it, we probably all have.

I do edit my work before submitting. I make sure the punctuation is how I want it, the line breaks are how I want them, there’s a great last line, a period at the very end, and I like it. I read it out loud. I sleep on it to make sure I still respect it in the morning. Sometimes I get up all night, read it, whisper it so I don’t wake up the whole house, and change things. Delete words and add others. Pretty quickly I am ready to submit.

What surprises me, and what I know, is that in about six months I will look at that poem again. I will “slash-and-burn”, I mean edit, the heck out of it. Things I couldn’t originally see. But I don’t have the patience to wait that long before submitting my work. Was it publishable when I wrote it? Yes. Could it have been better? Yes.

That is why on Acknowledgment pages of books you often see a caveat “some of these poems were published in the following journals in a different form …”

Know yourself and your writing, so when you submit, and when you put a book together, they contain the best poems possible.

Abstraction

Needles and sunflowers

one pierces the finger

one pierces the heart

a blinding light

reflects one off the other

until there is nothing—

a drop of blood burned

white on the table

a glass of water

too still to keep life.

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Tobi Alfier's most recent collection of poetry is Somewhere, Anywhere, Doesn't Matter Where. She is also co-editor with Jeff Alfier of the San Pedro River Review. Don't miss Tobi's columns on the craft of poetry: insert your email address in the "Follow By Email" box to the right of this article and you'll be notified every time a new article appears.

Artwork this issue from Wolfgang Eckert and Piotr Zajda

Cholla Needles - June Issue Released!

Cover by Kendall Johnson

The fine writers in issue 18 are:

Ernest Alois

Heather Morgan

James Marvelle

Tamara Hattis

Mitchell K. Grabois

alyssa hanna

Mark Evans

Lauren Gombas

David Chorlton

Kendall Johnson & 

John Brantingham

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New Book! Seven Stars Anthology 1973-1998

Seven Stars was one of literally a thousand literary magazines published in the Nixon Era and beyond. The magazine formally ended in 1998 after 260 issues & this small anthology will highlight a few living moments of the history in the small press movement. The magazines are literally falling apart from age now and this new selective release will give audiences a chance to visualize the many poetic movements that were active in those years. 200 different poets were selected from the over 3000 who appeared between the covers of Seven Stars. A short history of the press and the movement is included.

Available locally at Rainbow Stew, Space Cowboy Books, and Raven's Book Shoppe. 

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