An Unfinished Poem

On November 7^th, I began writing a poem about a woman I met in a hospital waiting room that morning. Energetic, glad, and eighty-six, Nancy talked about great coffee, shelter dogs, and her son. I didn’t finish the poem that day because too many images and ideas about it were bouncing in my mind – Nancy’s snow white hair, the silver sequins on her blouse, a childhood prayer, and all that blue she was wearing. I needed to let the draft of the poem be a while and return to it another day. It is December 3^rd and I have not looked at the poem. After November 8^th, it is difficult for me to endow anything I write with a sense of joy and Nancy seemed to me to be all about joy.

Like many other Americans, I am in mourning for the country I thought I lived in. I have not watched television news since 2 am, November 9^th when only four additional electoral votes were needed by the Republican nominee. Except for Maryland and Virginia, every southern state went to him. I live in a part of the South where people still preface a woman’s first name with “Miss” when they say it. Every time someone calls me “Miss Barbara” I feel I’ve been transported to the antebellum era or the set of an old Bette Davis movie but there is nothing nostalgic about an unfinished country.

It is difficult for me to write when friends and family members I thought I knew revealed through their vote for the Republican huckster who they really are. And I wonder how Nancy, dear Nancy voted.

April 30th Poem - Before Dark

BEFORE DARK

“Home before dark,” our mother’s voice

trails after my brother and me like a kite tail

as we scamper to stickball.  Sundown

happens too soon so we run to the blue

house as if our lives depend on time.

After supper, in the hallway, I hear

“She’s got to stop following me around”

and imagine his pals poking fun at

a skinny kid sister tagging along.

Today, I can’t help it; I’m happy.

God knows why.

I’m holding on to heaven.

If I let go, what’s there?  Nothing

but memory and pain.

I confess I’ve been unfaithful

to my dreams and my stories,

leaving them alone and unwritten

in the distant shimmering house,

the house they burst forward from,

rushing and true.  I have to keep writing.

That’s how it is, before dark…

from Singing Magic by Barbara Alfaro
© Barbara Alfaro
 

Falling Stars

Apparently, Shakespeare was wrong when he has Lady Macbeth say, "What's done cannot be undone," at least when it comes to reader reviews on Amazon. Imagine my surprise one morning when I noticed the 24 reviews for my memoir changed to 23 overnight. I emailed Amazon to find out if the review had been misplaced like a sock or a handkerchief, or had simply fallen off the site because of one of those glitches that sometimes occur in cyberspace. I was informed that the reviewer had indeed withdrawn his/her review. Now, this opens quite a few possible scenarios. Imagine a friend or a stranger is miffed at me for something I said or wrote and decides to withdraw their 5-star review and post a 1-star review in its place. Suppose this same friend or stranger reconciles (mentally) with me and in so doing, pulls the 1-star review and reposts the 5-star one. I can't help wondering if there is a limit on the number of times an Amazon book review can be undone and redone.

I'm not a fan of the gold star system so popular on the Internet to rate everything from books to bed linens. Recently, I stayed at an allegedly 5-star hotel and paid an exorbitant rate for an almost dingy room, thin, threadbare towels, and a not exactly clean bathtub. I also waited almost half an hour in the hotel restaurant for my dessert. Admittedly, almost half an hour is a very long time but I wasn't going anywhere till I got that chocolate mousse. I'd rate the room and the service in the restaurant 3 stars (that seems generous but the chocolate mousse was swell). After my visit, even the questionnaire the hotel sent me was annoyingly fatuous. The customer service representative responded that she was disappointed in the hotel staff. She was disappointed? Suddenly, it's about her? I give their questionnaire and the customer service rep's email 1 star (1/2 star each).

Authors often spend years researching and writing their books. It seems odd that the same gold star system applied in grammar school is used to assess their endeavors. I attended a non-traditional college where students receive reviews of their work but not specific grades. If an adviser hints for several pages that you were a lazy slug for most of the semester or praises the excellence of your work, you don't need a Sherlockian moment to imagine the invisible C or A. I believe a similar system of pro and con reviews, sans stars, would work the same way. Unfortunately, there will always be meanspirited readers who have never written anything more creative than a grocery list, posting snarky 1-star reviews. And there will probably always be those cheating the system (a best-selling indie author recently admitted he paid for three hundred 5-star reviews). Fortunately, there are also fair-minded, scrupulous reviewers writing honest and informative reviews.

I remember the tension I felt in the second grade when Sister Mary Lucille walked down the aisle toward my desk as she handed out graded test papers. Would I receive one star or two? Or heavens, would I get three stars the way that brown-nose Ann Marie Reilly almost always did? I'm awfully tall for that little wood desk now. It doesn't fit me any more. I don't think the gold star system -- rising or falling -- does either.

When Writers Don't Read

"There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are."

~ W. Somerset Maugham

As an author, I am usually delighted at the success of other writers. Now that my sincere disclaimer is made, here comes the however. However, I recently read an interview with a New York Times bestselling writer who candidly confides she is "embarrassed" to admit she doesn't read much as there isn't enough time "for books." This seems a lot like an airline pilot feeling awkward about admitting that he never finished flight school or a filmmaker saying she doesn't like movies. I candidly confide when writers don't read, I hesitate about reading their books.

This same writer attributes her success to word of mouth, and again, I am happy for her. Although almost everyone who has read my memoir Mirror Talk has loved it, my book sales indicate they have apparently kept quiet, zipped, and mum about it. I say "almost" because of a woman in Germany who wrote me a lengthy email about all she thought wrong with my memoir and an odd young man (in his profile photo he is apparently wearing part of a whisk broom as a fake moustache) who also disliked my book. Mirror Talk received the 2012 IndieReader Discovery Award for Best Memoir and I prefer this assessment of my work to that of the German woman and the whisk broom boy.

I have bookcases bulging with books but there are some books I don't want far from me and these are kept in the book basket beside my chair. My "To be read" and "To be read again" books include the poetry of Rilke, Yeats, and Dickinson, and contemporary poets Marilyn Kallet and Hans Ostrom; short stories of Eudora Welty, Isaac Bashevis Singer, and Edgar Allan Poe; novels by the Bronte sisters, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tom Wolfe, Barbara Kingsolver, Toni Morrison, and Ray Bradbury; philosophy books by George Santayana and, one book about politics, written by Sidney Hook. The Bible, Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky, and Dickens are there too, all honoring my study with their eloquence. If the bestselling writer were to find time for reading, I would recommend any and all of the above authors. I would also recommend the following books by several friends of mine.


In Finding Clarity by Laura Novak, full-time mom and part-time amateur detective Clari Drake does some serious sleuthing. This quick, witty novel has a surprise ending even Poirot might not guess.

A little girl named Nell is the star of the totally original and totally charming stories in The Sun Zebra by Rolando Garcia. There is so much love echoing through these stories - love of family and love of nature - they are a joy to read.



Shades of Love by Sunny Lockwood is a collection of short stories about romantic love, married love, love between a mother and daughter, and a father and daughter. The only S & M you'll find in this book is sweetness of soul and the magic of a great read.

All three books are ebooks so you don't need a bookcase or a basket, just time for pleasure.

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