Matthew Haughton asked if we would be interested in an essay about Jim Lally’s Stick Tight Man. We could not have been more excited! So without further ado, here is “Stick Tight Man: An Appreciation”!
-Editor Bronson O’Quinn

This place has come to be known for its poetry. For me, the first and most iconic Kentucky poet will always be Jesse Stuart. Stuart worked with an obsession to validate himself as a poet statesman. He sought to defy stereotypes while raising the subject matter of his home through verse that compared to his own literary heroes. This was no small task. Indeed, the poet managed to struggle and succeed, seemingly re-defining what poetry could do at the time of his prominence. As a result, there is a mythos in my mind about the Kentucky poet. When I return to my hometown, I expect to see Stuart as a young man. He is composing his seven hundred or so sonnets in just one year. Leaning from his work, he stoops to gather fallen leaves that will carry his compositions when paper becomes too scarce. In his celebrated poem “A Farmer Singing”, Stuart declared “I am a farmer singing at the plow/ And I take my time to plow along/ A steep Kentucky hill, I sing my song”. The poem continues: “My basket songs are woven from the words/ Of corn and crickets, trees and men and birds.” The reader is made aware of the poet through his celebration of the mind, body and nature. The three components become inseparable. Stuart ends his poem in letter form stating: “Yours very respectfully, Jesse Stuart.”

Like Stuart, The Stick Tight Man has become an enigmatic voice of this place. Jim Lally’s book is just as aware of its cells and structures. In the title poem, Jim also declares his arrival: “I arrive from the woods/ at the beginning of the last/ week of summer covered/ with so many stick-tights/ that I will have to throw/ my shirt away.” Like a snake, the poet will shed his skin and grow another one just as casually. By the end of the poem he is addressed by his partner: “Look at you, Stick-tight man./ What on earth do you need?/ Look at you, stick-tight man./ You’ve finally gone to seed!”.

In the poem, our poet has returned from his work covered in the remnants of his home. He is steeped in that nature in a very human sort of way. In fact, the whole of this book speaks to that connection. In a time when the term “humanism” is tossed around and subscribed to many points of view, this book separates itself from all conversations that are unnecessary and instead illuminates the body, mind and nature in a very intimate and often humorous way. There is room for spiritual concerns as well. But they too are very focused and personal. Lally gives us the methodical promise of a poem. But unlike Stuart who had to lift so much to accomplish even a fundamental amount of attention, Lally coaxes us to understand that the writing of poetry is a very relaxed effort- one that might seem effortless if not for the extreme dedication to its sustainability and scale.

When asked, I tell people this is one of my favorite books because it reads like a day spent with a friend. We are allowed to muck about the scenery. Later we are invited to sit and listen to what is to be heard. The book generates a remarkable amount of inquiry. One of my personal favorite poems, “Ghost Tree” finds the poet drawn to the “red embers/ of an old locust stump” that is left burning in a field. In the last stanza, the poet is detached from his body momentarily to “check the glow/ of its afterlife.” There is melancholy in the poem and a sense of the ethereal. But those leaps are justified by the context the poet gives the reader. To my reading, this is the core of Lally’s love for things. He must feel for that locust stump and give it a sense of permanence.

It is has been my intention in this essay to state that the Singing Farmer of the past is in fine company here in the 21st century. He has a comrade in the Stick Tight Man. They roam about in the mythos of this place. They have gotten to know one another and have found common and divergent points of view. When I bump into Jim, I can feel the world of his poems rolling off him. He speaks with generosity and concern. Like Stuart, he leans from his work. Lally deserves so much praise for his art. I have no doubt he has received it tenfold to his efforts. His book is proof that we can go on writing about this place while simultaneously creating our own unique narratives. We are given a place to work from, a perspective to consider and appreciate. We can return to this work (as I do often) to re-evaluate our own concerns in times of need.

I am pleased to share this book with other readers as often as I can. It is my hope that they discover its unique voice much the way I did upon first reading. I want them to see Lally’s poem “Behind the House” and notice how “poke berries hang/ like purple nuns/ waving with the breeze”. It is my contention that we must all become “alert to the swing/ of the world’s belief” so that maybe we too might “hope to see the face of god.” For this place is full of unexpected faces.

Matthew Haughton is the author of “Stand in the Stillness of Woods” (WordTech Editions). His chapbook, “Bee-coursing Box” (Accents Publications) was nominated for the Weatherford Award for Appalachian Poetry Book of the Year. Twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize, his poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies including Appalachian Journal, Now & Then, Still, Border Crossing, and The Louisville Review. Haughton works as a school teacher in his native Kentucky.