This is going to be an immense post. Jaime wasn't even aware that this event was going on until yesterday, and he has sent me everything I needed. The first thing is the brief essay I wrote for John Mella when Jaime was the featured poet for Light Quarterly. But then Jaime responds to my questions and generously shares with us a number of his poems.
Lariat
The Bard of Kilkenny
I first encountered The Hayes at the Eratosphere, the on-line poetry workshop so devoted to formal verse where I serve as poet lariat. In an attempt to jolt our members out of the dreariness of mere self-expression, I challenged them to versify classic jokes blessed with punch lines that scanned. Nine months later Light Quarterly gave us their autumn issue, in which we published about 75 of these jokes. Though dozens of poets from all corners of the Anglosphere submitted work, forty percent of what made the cut came from Kilkenny, Ireland. More recently (and tellingly) I’ve been seeing R.S. Gwynn referred to as “the funniest poet outside Ireland.”
John Mella copied me a letter he sent The Hayes. It listed the poems that would appear in this issue and warned darkly that “orthographical changes might be necessary.” That’s John saying “Hayes, you can’t punctuate worth a damn.” Jim shares that problem with Auden and Yeats, both of whom lack his sense of humor. I attribute this disability to poetry’s being an entirely aural phenomenon to Jim. For him, it simply doesn’t exist on the page. I’ve watched the Eratospherians trying to edit him for years, and they just don’t realize that Hayes poems are extemporaneously created in a pub near closing time, not composed on a computer. They’re the work of an ear attuned to the speech of little pipe smokers who pop out from under mushrooms, for whom four consecutive unaccented syllables are merely grace notes between two alliterative stresses or two swallows of Guiness.
Hayes’ comic genius doesn’t just lie in his considering the sex lives of centipedes and paying obeisance to Ogden Nash:
To find one ‘G' spot is quite nifty;
it could well be that they have fifty.
(And finding every one I guess is
cherished by all centipedesses.)
Instead, his demented imagination can strap a cat to a buttered piece of toast and resolve the world’s energy crisis. So much for “Poetry makes nothing happen.” The other distinguishing characteristic of Jim’s gift is that he is close to the soil we have abandoned. However madcap or contemporary their jokes, Hayes’ utterances are rooted Antaeus-like in the rocky fields of our forbears. I swear he pastures a cow on his thatched roof lest the last wolf rise in Ireland.
The Man Who Used to Fish
When younger, he went fishing every day.
His dinner over, he would pack his rod
and head down to the bank and there he’d flay
the water to a foam; and he would spray
the Nore from bank to bank with casts of flies.
When hope took luck in hand he caught a prize,
and then, as darkness fell, back home he trod
certain in his heart there was a God.
In time, he was a fisherman of skill,
casting thirty yards and more with ease
to drop a floating fly on to a rill.
If there were fish, he seldom failed to fill
his creel and every season took a quota
of salmon from the Moy. In Minnesota
he even showed the Yanks his expertise.
Faith was with old women on their knees.
Now Time, the whelp of Death, has found his scent;
he hasn’t dapped the may or tied a fly
in years nor stalked a bank as nighttime lent
its cover to his singular intent.
And though the hour has come for giving thanks
for time spent fishing on so many banks,
he‘s lost the way and doesn’t want to try
and doubts that even God can fathom why.
This is one of the most affecting and accomplished poems of the tens of thousands that have been posted on the Eratosphere. Written for Wiley Clements, a poet nearing the end of his life, it’s the work of a one-time boy who artlessly spooked every fish on the Nore. He grew to mastery and bemused incomprehension of the world he is called upon to record. Are you too troubled by mortality? Unbelief? The life so short, the art so long to learn? Turn to Hayes who reduces his hearers to hearty laughter.
Now Jim speaks, answering my questions, and sharing with us several of his poems. The Raggedy Bush first appeared here in Bakeoff I and was approvingly commented on by Dick Davis, and Hic was similarly commented on during Dick Wilbur's debut at the Sphere.
My interest in poetry stems, like most devotees, from childhood, however my poetry writing is of much more recent vintage. In a life during which I spent a great many years travelling internationally, creative writing time was at a premium with little opportunity to engage with the muse, consequently, it was only some 8 years ago or so that I began to take writing seriously.
Living where I do, in the beautiful medieval town of Kilkenny in south-east Ireland, there is no facility to workshop or otherwise communicate with other formalist poets, consequently the advent of on-line forums where one could post for critique and dialogue with other poets of like interest, has proven to be an immeasurable boon, not alone in advancing my technical competence, but in giving me exposure to poets of great ability and artistry, beyond any such I could hope to encounter otherwise.
Significant to the benefit of on-line workshopping is the immediacy of response, amounting practically to real-time dialogue. Material — in concept and form, can be experimented in with no untoward loss of time or creative energy.
It always amazes, how so many excellent and erudite writers continue to give so selflessly of their talent to assist and educate.
I will not cease to be grateful for that.
I can’t remember the first poem I posted here, but I do remember those of Porridgeface and Bob and have been encouraged, prompted, and indeed forced into improvement by the skills I saw so evident from the very beginning in their work.
I suppose my own attitude to poetry could be summed up in the words of Walpole;
The world is a tragedy to those who feel and a comedy to those who think-
Throughout my life, while admiring all forms of poetry, I have always reserved a special affection for that form of the art known as Light Verse.
Verse that is cheery and light. Light in the sense of cheerful, airy, light footed and light-hearted. Verse, if you will, that requires little mental effort on the readers’ part but which disguises the stringent demands on the writer’s technique. A fault of scansion or rhyme, an awkwardness or obscurity that would damage only the immediate context of a piece of High Verse threatens the whole structure of a Light Verse poem.
Light Verse has a long and distinguished history, from the mots of Martial to the satire of Swift. Neither has it been ignored by the greatest poets of recent times, Yeats, Auden, Betjeman, Larkin et al.
I do not think it necessary to expound on the various forms of Light Verse, the reader will readily identify the varieties of the art which I have employed and those which I have chosen to ignore. The reader, and I fervently hope there will be one, will also readily identify my influences, however, and it is herein that I beg indulgence--
perhaps the peruser will also detect within these pages my own particular reflections on not so much the absurdity of life, as on the reason, or lack thereof, for it. My attitude, such as it is, to the purpose as well as the meaning of an existence that allows us to experience the beauty of being, in all its magnificent manifestations, and then demands that we, one and all, flounder in the knowledge of inexorable death and departure.
What to do in the face of such nonsense but treat it with nonsense. I am not denying that provision should be made to pay the boatman, but forgive me if I first decide to poke fun at the journey. Naturally, Granny doesn’t shoot Little Asphodel, Alfred doesn’t make a habit of self-decapitation nor does Dad rise from the tomb to yodel in real life, but, and here’s my point, is any of that more crazy than the end which awaits us all?
Why shouldn’t love be laughed at, (I didn’t say sneered), or manners, customs and characteristics for that matter? And it’s not just other mens’ foibles that are made fun of here but, more particularly, those traits peculiar to ourselves which so necessarily inject a modicum of sanity into what is essentially an insane circumstance we inadvertently happen to find ourselves in.
By all means let us enjoy the beauty of a rose, the glory of a sunset, let us admire the grand vision, the strive for the ideal, the achievements of the good and the great whilst we await the lay of the last minstrel, but let me, if no one else, rage against this lying diet.
I have not in my meagre efforts, made any play at denying the metaphysics of my existence, but merely contended that my God is having the real laugh.
The Wishing Tree
I sowed an acorn, lovingly.
It grew into an olive tree,
but this was not the oddest thing,
it blossomed oranges in Spring
and when the Autumn rains began it
sagged with pear and pomegranate.
I asked a wise man, old and bent,
to tell me what my visions meant.
He said I’d sown an oak tree nut
and tended it till full grown but
could not stop it running wild
with dreams I nurtured for a child.
I look out at my wishing tree,
each leaf and branch attuned to me.
In Summer, Spring and Fall my eyes
watch it fruit with wild surprise.
But in the Winter, stark and bare,
I see my daughter’s image there.
Hic!
I had two dozen bottles of whiskey in my cellar
and was told to empty each and every one
down the sink by my wife. And I was to tell her,
truthfully, when the unpleasant task was done.
With a heavy heart I pulled the cork from the first
and poured the contents down the sink excepting
one glass which I drank to slake my thirst.
I did the same wid the second bottle acceptin’
a single glass fer meself as I toasted,”Good luck!”
I widdrew the cork from the third one then to drown
the sink which I poured and drank. Then, slowly, I took
the cork from the fourth and poured the bottle down
the glass which I drank. I pulled the bottle through
the cork of the fifth and drank one sink I poured out
the window which I boddled. I poured the cork, widdrew
it down the boddle which I drank about
the time I corked the sink wid the glass and drank
the pour which I boddled. When I had emptied the wall
I steadied the cellar wid one hand, which I drank, then sank
the sink and counted the glasseyes, boddles, all
to the other, and more of which there was turty tree.
When the house came by I countedid again
and then got all the houses in one boddle easily
which I drank. Nod under the effluence then
in incoheralolol nor being as thunk as teeple pink.
I fool so feelish. - OH DANNY BHOY I forget
knowing who is me and starting to think
the drunker I stand around the long girl I get.
Serenading the Neighbors
Little Alfred has a way
of driving all the neighbors mad,
a trait, his mother likes to say,
that he borrowed from his dad.
Let the moon rise late or early
Alfie’s little voice will trill
as he plays his ukulele
underneath the windowsill
When dad gets up to sing along
their voices trill a doleful air.
The neighbors sense there’s something wrong
and fall down to their knees in prayer.
Mother thinks they’re being spiteful,
barely holding back her tears.
She says dad’s voice is quite delightful
considering he’’s been dead for years.
The Raggedy Bush
The Raggedy Bush Stands lonely in Poulgower
arrayed in rags of motley age and hue:
a shrine to antique faith, druidic power
whose rites are here performed each day anew.
Tattered shreds on branch and twig entwine;
each scrap a prayer, a knotted reverence
to deities both vengeful and benign.
What do folk seek? Divine benevolence?
The Raggedy Bush roots deep into the souls
of all who come in supplication here
and flourishes on its exacted tolls
of avarice, credulity and fear.
Ringed by the Church and chapel, much alive
the Bush thrives--and our pagan gods survive.
[This message has been edited by Tim Murphy (edited June 13, 2007).]
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