Saint Paul Hotel is the second collection from Jonathan Hayes. Check out the review by justin.barrett:

This collection of poetry deals with city themes and city scenes and appears to be events lived as the poet was housed in room 140 of the St. Paul Hotel. In the poem "Room One-Forty" Hayes starts off by "Hitting home runs / in an / empty hotel room". Hitting home runs is exactly what every writer strives towards doing. "Room One-Forty", like most of the poems in Saint Paul Hotel, abounds with alliterations and odd rhymings schemes. "Hummy lum tum hummy / went the song of dummy head" is indicative of the type of word play this collection revels in.

Most of the poems are untitled and feel more like the idle thoughts and random notes of a madman. They are often disjointed, sometimes prescient but almost always amusing. The untitled poem on page 47 is a good example of Hayes' style: "piss soaked / newspaper on floor // all this he did not remember / upon awakening to blood everywhere // the nightmare remained, / he committed suicide in his sleep".

The last poem in the collection wraps up the collection quite nicely. "the present fire / doomed to be extinguished // ashes linger // to build / the supports of memory". This is a very strong ending to a strong collection.

Jonathan Hayes has a great collection here in Saint Paul Hotel. I recommend it.

Echoes from the Sarcophagus is Jonathan Hayes's first chapbook of poems. justin.barrett reviewed it as well:

Echoes From The Sarcophagus is Hayes' first collection... Reading these two collections in chronological order one can see the evolution of a poet; the evolution of a creative psyche coming to terms with the world around him. Echoes is written in a fragmentary style with words and snippets of imagery lined up to form poems, with the poems themselves flowing together so that the reader often doesn't know when one poem ends and another begins. Like Saint Paul Hotel, Echoes contains much wordplay and the psychedelic, surreal connections that seem to be a favorite of Hayes.

There is a bit more rhyme scheming and rhyming games for my taste, but despite this, there are still flashes of genius. An untitled poem on page 10 contains, "the zany zealot / hurled born again words / with the fervor of zorro in combat". Another untitled poem on page 12 contains some wonderful imagery, including: "pigeons in seattle at the greyhound station / pecking and spearing at styrofoam balls / with hungry ignorant beaks". Alliteration, onomatopoeia, unusual rhyme schemes, various metaphors and a good use of adjectives characterize this collection, as well as Hayes' writing in general. There are quite a few short stories and short shorts in Echoes, which are absent in Saint Paul Hotel. I feel Hayes is at his best with these stories. He has a penchant for laying down the smart and gorgeous phrase, and he uses it to his advantage in his short stories. This ability can sometimes, but not always, be overshadowed with the word games he plays in the poems .

All in all, Echoes From The Sarcophagus is decidedly weaker than Saint Paul Hotel, but this is a necessity for any writer who is maturing and evolving and getting better. It is a strong first collection and if you are into wordplay and surreality, then I highly recommend it.