'The Poem Saves Time and Space'

Discovering a good writer long after his death is a gift and a betrayal. Gratitude mingles with regret and even guilt. Selfishly, we wish he had truly been our contemporary and we had been smarter and watched him develop as a writer. Instead, we compensate by scrambling after his work. For several weeks I’ve lived with James Hayford’s Star in the Shed Window, 1933-88 (New England Press, 1989). 

The poems of Hayford (1913-93) remind me in their brevity and density of Samuel Menashe’s and in their strict craftsmanship as an expression of morality of J.V. Cunningham’s. Occasionally in their subject matter – often rural New England – they bring to mind Hayford’s early mentor, Robert Frost, though Hayford was no slavish imitator nor did he turn himself into a folksy “nature” or “transcendental” poet – two common misreadings of Frost at his best and grimmest. Even when writing about the seasons or farming, Hayford is a deceptively tough-minded poet. He writes in his brief preface:

 

“Almost every one [of his poems] has been sweated over; a few have been agonized over. Every poem in this book, however light or carefree it may sound, represents a serious attempt to say something, and a more or less difficult struggle to get it right.”

 

Take the theme irresistible to many poets, callow and mature: the making of poetry. Most often it’s a ceremony of self-celebration, dreary solipsism immediately forgettable. Here is Hayford’s “What a Poem Is” from 1957:

 

“A poem is what you do about a fact—

A poem is an act.

 

“A poem is what the mind does at its best—

Is an intelligence test.

 

“A poem is a performance—on a stage

No larger than a page.”

 

Without fail, Hayford’s poems are about something, never airily abstract. Their form is part of their aboutness. “Permanent Surprise” (1978) is how Hayford describes a poem’s function:

 

“A permanent surprise?

Yes, what a poem supplies.

 

“Unlike most jokes and stunts

Which seldom work but once,

 

“The coil-springs of fine rhyme

Go off—ping—every time

 

“Because it’s not just wit,

Though wit is part of it;

 

“The rest of it is heart,

The everlasting part.”

 

Not just any content, but humanely emotional content. Good poems demand that we feel something. Take “A Little Case” (1966):

 

“A poem’s the essential novel

Housed in a little case:

The narrative compacted,

The hero a pronoun—

Two verbs tell how he acted.

The poem saves time and space.”

 

We’ve all read empty novels and poems. Hayford would fill a poem with a good novel’s overflowing stuff. In “Reason for Rhyme” (1963), Hayford offers an apologia for the fortuitous serendipity of rhyming:

 

“Let rhyme be your defense

From too much reason in the choice

Of words: let happy accidents

Surprise your sense

And please your voice.”

 

Finally, “Revelations” (1961):

 

“Of course if we didn’t write,

Our faults wouldn’t come to light.

As for our virtues, they

Are what our writing earned—

We carry them away:

The poem’s what the poet learned.”

 

You’ll have to hunt but please try to find Hayford’s poems.  X.J. Kennedy described Star in the Shed Window as “the result of a lonely, brave, and unswerving devotion to his art for more than sixty years.”