SOURCE: “Paul Hamilton Hayne's Methods of Poetic Composition,” in Mississippi Quarterly: The Journal of Southern Culture, Vol. 24, No. 1, Winter, 1970‐71, pp. 57‐62.

In the following essay, Simms presents Hayne's son's observations of his father's literary practices.

To present‐day students of Southern literature, Paul Hamilton Hayne is important primarily because he represents a link between two literary traditions, those of the Old South and the New, and two other prominent Southern poets, William Gilmore Simms and Sidney Lanier. Critics are in general agreement that Hayne himself wrote too much—biographies, essays, and poems that simply echoed the Victorian masters—and revised too little. It would also appear that much of his poetry was too delicate and refined and too removed from life to interest the general reader of his time.¹ Yet despite such shortcomings, he was recognized by many of his contemporaries as a good, competent poet and as one...