Not especially surprised when I arrived at the poem “Her Life is an Edward Hopper Painting,” being in one myself from the beginning of Tobi Alfier's latest collection, Grit and Grace. 

From the git-go: “All that is left sometimes, is to hold faith in tradition and comfort—dog laying in front of the fire, a bit of spirit to make the kisses sweet, one last song hanging in the air.” Actually, that’s the last stanza of the first poem, “Before any Words are Spoken,” but even at the first, I’d succumbed to the mood of inevitability with its respites of blessed solitude. I was one of the nighthawks in Hopper’s diner, sharing space with a stranger or two lost in private thoughts, ingesting Alfier’s knowing sensibility along with my coffee and wedge of lemon pie. 

Alfier knows Hopper’s people. They live at the edge of survival with little chance of ever realizing their dreams, and knowing it, but plugging along anyway, held together with determination if only just to keep on going. The unnamed gent who walks in the cemetery, following his doctor’s orders to do ten-thousand steps a day. “All that is left is his faith in ten-thousand, the footfalls of loping deer, headstones in icy winter, and the last song hanging in empty air, his bold baritone in the chorus.” 

Or the three long-retired, unnamed barflies who habituate Harold’s Place: “These guys wear the stamp of fisheries, the prison, or the old scrap yard—stories told by scars, tattoos, language, and the speed at which they polish off their pension’s allotment of booze . . . They’ll die here, tilting barstools hug their asses barely shy of Heaven. If they feel sorry for the way things worked out, they keep it to themselves.” Abiding Aristotle’s sentiment, Alfier quotes: “The ideal man bears the accidents of life with dignity and grace, making the best of circumstances.”  

Would that the patriarchal sage have known “The Blind Woman [who] Touches her Toes in the Sea” where Alfier writes, “Gentle and chilly foam tickles her toes but does not scare her. The heart can only do this work alone, she thinks, as she often does, thankful that no one comes to ‘help’ her walk back to the street.” Dignity and grace—and love (for that you must read the poem).

Although “church” is no slur among Alfier’s people, the biblical “grace” would seem to be missing for many of them. The occasional angel, however, does appear. Most memorably for me is “Viv,” the motherly diner waitress in “Decaf or Regular” who can tell when it’s time to cut off your caffeine. “She’ll know if you stayed up all night to study, fueled by No Doz and Red Bull—she knows the only way you’re gonna get out of this truck-stop town is to do well, or you’ll be takin’ the lunch rush over for Manuel. Not good.” She’s the girl in the Edward Hopper painting: “She’s the wildflower no one can name, windchimes caught in a forgotten tune. A time-stamped photograph of empty, she sits with her coffee, silent and alone.”

April, 2021