Poems of James McIntyre — A Reader’s Guide

A Poet of the Dairy

McIntyre’s most distinctive subject is cheese. The opening couplet is only the first of many references to dairy products, and the preface mentions “a number of dairy odes recently” composed. These poems treat cheese-making with the same earnestness that other poets reserve for love or nature. The poet’s friend Joaquin Miller called him “my dear poet of the Canadian pasture fields,” and McIntyre seems to have embraced the label. The dairy odes are not merely descriptive; they assert the dignity of agricultural labor and the value of Canadian produce. McIntyre’s language is concrete: “rich cheese, milk and cream” are not metaphors but actual products. This focus on the material yields of the land gives the collection a distinctive, locally grounded voice.

Narrative Verse and the Bear Hunt

One of the longest poems in the excerpts recounts a series of encounters with bears. The narrative is detailed and episodic: a bear steals a pig, is shot through the eyes; another wrecks a beehive and is caught in a spring gun; a third outwits a trap by digging under it. McIntyre describes the traps with mechanical precision—“I put through barrels rods of iron / So they a bear neck would environ”—and the bears are cunning adversaries. The poem ends with the speaker living “in peace” after years of strife. The meter is rough, often forcing rhymes through awkward syntax, but the storytelling is vivid. These bear poems show McIntyre’s willingness to write about rural danger and ingenuity, blending humor with practical knowledge.

Patriotic Odes and Imperial Themes

McIntyre’s patriotic poems celebrate Canada’s place in the British Empire. The “Queen’s Jubilee Ode, 1887” praises Victoria’s reign and lists technological achievements: steam power, the electric light, the telegraph. A longer poem recounts wars in Victoria’s reign, from the Crimean War to the Zulu War, with the Lion of Britain driving back the Russian Bear and the Bengal Tiger. The language is simple and direct, often relying on stock phrases (“dismal cry,” “deadly scars”). McIntyre’s imperialism is uncomplicated; he sees Canada’s loyalty as natural and beneficial. These odes lack the concrete detail of the dairy poems, but they reveal the poet’s sense of participating in a larger historical narrative.

The Poet’s Self-Presentation

McIntyre’s preface and the extracts from letters frame the collection as a friendly, community-oriented work. He thanks “friends in this neighborhood” and “gentlemen at a distance” who encouraged him. The letters praise his poems for their Canadian character: one reader says they “seemed to transport my memory across the chasm of twenty-five years.” Another calls the poem on Father Rannie “the ring of a fine old ballad.” McIntyre includes these endorsements as part of the book, creating a sense of a local literary circle. He does not claim high artistic ambition; instead, he hopes readers will “peruse the poems in a friendly spirit.” This modesty is consistent with the plain style of the verse itself.

Readers approaching McIntyre’s poems should expect irregular meter, forced rhymes, and a strong preference for practical subjects over lyrical abstraction. The collection is best read as a document of late-nineteenth-century Canadian rural culture, where cheese-making and bear-hunting sit alongside imperial patriotism. McIntyre’s voice is earnest and unpretentious, and his poems reward attention to their specific, local details.

McIntyre’s lines plod like a familiar ox, yet I’ve always found their honest ache for home. It reminds me of how certain old verses settle in the bones. There’s a like-minded quietness in A Celtic Psaltery Being Mainly Renderings in English Verse from Irish & Welsh Poetry — Themes and Context, a shared reverence for weathered places and the songs they keep.