1982

Hall to McNair: December 6, 1982

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Letter from Hall to McNair, December 6, 1982, Colby College Special Collections

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 6 December 1982

Wes McNair
Box 43
North Sutton, NH 03260

Dear Wes,

I like this one, and I will never like quite so much as
the other recent ones, as your best work – because it is an
anecdote only, because it depends upon a “trick ending,” and
it does not quite survive that… But it is good anyway. It
is just smaller.

And there is one problem with it, as I see it. That is
the meaning of the word “it” at the beginning. It could mean
“veil,” or “apron,” but as it used at the end of the third line,
by the sense of things, it must mean “apron”. But how do you
close an apron around a canning rack? Or close it in the winter
around reluctant lids of jam? In the latter case, maybe you
use it for friction to open the canning lids.

Obviously I am not getting something that you intend.
Obviously I think it is your fault… Maybe not.

The only other thing… I think that “a far-off look” is
pretty trite. Otherwise I like it a lot, and I certainly intend
to pass it onto Joey…but I think maybe you can touch it up a
tiny bit.

Joey is out digging up the sassafras root, so he can’t
speak.

Don

A note from McNair about this letter: I eventually abandoned “The Wish,” (Don’s sense of a trick ending killed it), but bits of the poem’s imagery and narrative have reappeared over the years in three poems – ‘The Name,” “Remembering Aprons,” and part 5 of “Town Limits”.

Read The Name (published version)

Read Remembering Aprons (published version)

Read Town Limits (published version)

McNair to Hall: December 3, 1982

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Letter from McNair to Hall, December 3, 1982, Page 1, Milne Special Collections and Archives, University of New Hampshire

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 December 3, 1982
Dear Don,

Here is another one for your collection.
If it seems worthy, please pass it on
to Joey.

And please tell Joey the reason
the tea is not helping his headaches
is that it’s ginger tea he should
be drinking, not the regular.

Love,

Wes

THE WISH

Bernice Manchester,
who exchanged the veil
for an apron, and wore it
on Frank’s farm for fifty years,
closing it each long summer
around hot canning racks,
each winter around reluctant
lids of jam,

who tied herself back
into it after bearing
each of his children,
and grew old lacing herself
into her black shoes
and walking to the same
places, stove, dining room
and chickenhouse,

who marched right through
five decades with string beans
and bread and apple pie
for his hired men, who carried
him eggs for breakfast
through the great hurricane
and windstorms no one knew
about within,

lay apronless at the end
beside the pink flush
toilet Frank installed,
and with a far-off look
announced that in her final
rest, she wished
to lie by him,
the salesman

everyone but Bernice had forgot
died just after she married him,
at seventeen.

-Wesley McNair

McNair to Hall: November 6, 1982

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Letter from McNair to Hall, November 6, 1982, Milne Special Collections and Archives, University of New Hampshire

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 November 6, 1982

Dear Don–

Since it is 11:50 AM, I must
fly to the post with this revision.

If you think it’s ready, please
hand it to Joey.

Many thanks for the advice!

Love,

Wes

Editorial note about this letter: The revision referred to is “The Minister’s Death,” sent on this date as it was published.

Read The Minister’s Death (published version)

Hall to McNair: November 3, 1982

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Letter from Hall to McNair, November 3, 1982, Colby College Special Collections

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 3 November 1982

Wes McNair
Box 43
North Sutton, NH 03260

Dear Wes,

I think this is extremely beautiful, possibly even one
of your very best – and I think it has one horrible word in it.
A gross and palpable dead metaphor in the word “cradling.” (It
is the same dead metaphor which practically ruins Roethke’s
Meadow Mouse…but not quite.) (You are alive: you can change
it!) There are some people who actually say that the bandito cradled
the Thompson sub-machine gun – and then claim that they are not
comparing the sub-machine gun to a baby!

It is another one like “cupping” and “darting” which is
very commonly used, but is a dead metaphor. There is a man
who sends poems to the Country Journal who tries to tell me
that the word “wake,” as in “in the wake of the scythe,” has
absolutely nothing to do with water, because after all his
Webster’s and his Roget tell him that it means “aftermath” and
things like that…

Anyway, could you find something else for that? And there
is one other dead metaphor, which is “framed,” but it is not
such a sore thumb as “cradling.” I would infinitely prefer
that there were something besides an oil painting or a window
in that line, because “framed” in the sense of “outlined” or
“surrounded” is very very dead… But it is not so bad as
cradling and I can’t pretend it is.

The only other thing I have any doubt about at all is the
rhythm in “just look down at the rug/ on rugs to wear…” (sic: “where”) A whole
lot of monosyllables without much importance to any of them,
and it makes for a dead patch in the rhythm, and it is especially
in the first line there. I wonder if it might be possible to
take out at least one of the little words.

But what I started out with is the real thing. This is
absolutely wonderful.

Love as ever,

Don

 

McNair to Hall: October 31, 1982

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Letter from McNair to Hall, October 31, 1982, Milne Special Collections and Archives, University of New Hampshire

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 October 31, 1982

Dear Don,

I hope you and Joey like the enclosed. If
you both do, please let me know and keep it.

If there are reservations, I will just wait
and return to it later.

Writing is ‘going fine’ in spite of all
my teaching and other duties! I remain on
my daily schedule!

Love,

Wes

Editorial note about this letter: The unnamed poem referred to is “The Minister’s Death.”

Here is the text of “The Minister’s Death” as sent to Hall:

That long fall,
when the voices stopped
in the tweed mouth
of his radio, and sermons
stood behind the door
of his study in files
no one would ever again inspect,
and even the black shoes
and vestments, emptied of him,
were closed away,
they sat together Sundays
in the house, now hers —
the son wearing his suit
and water-combed hair,
and mother in a house dress,
cradling the dead
man’s cane. Somewhere
at the edge of the new
feeling just beginning
between them, floorlamps
bloomed triple bulbs
and windowsills sagged
with African violets,
and the old woman,
not knowing exactly how
to say his face looked lovely
in the chair, framed
by a white aura
of doily, said nothing
at all. And the son,
not used to feeling
small inside the great
shoulderpads of his suit,
looked down at the rugs
on rugs to where the trees kept
scattering the same, soft
puzzle of sunlight
until, from time to time,
she found the words
of an old dialogue they both
could speak:”How has the weather
been this week? What time
did you start out from Keene?”

Hall to McNair: October 14, 1982

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Letter from Hall to McNair, October 14, 1982, Page 1, Colby College Special Collections

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 14 Oct. 1982

Wes McNair

Dear Wes,

I like the new title. It is not that I care
whether “retreat” was meant about the ice-age, and
it is not that I think it “sounds like” a military
word. “Retreat” is always a military word –
whether it is spoken about the Dow Jones Index, or
the colons in autumn, or the ice in the spring, or
anything. Just as the word “cradle” is always a
wooden object for rocking babies in, even when we
cradle a submachine gun…

Love,

Don

 

McNair to Hall: October 13, 1982

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Letter from McNair to Hall, October 13, 1982, Milne Special Collections and Archives, University of New Hampshire

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 October 13, 1982

Dear Don,

“Retreats” was meant as a word about the
“ice age.” But if you think it sounds like a
military word, I want to change it.

Thus, the enclosed. I do like the title better!

If you have any doubts about the grammar
of “Paul,” please let me know.

It’s off to school! I’m very glad
you like the poems!

Love,

Wes

Editorial note about this letter: The enclosed poem is “After the Ice,” in its published version.

Read After the Ice, as published.

 

Hall to McNair: October 11, 1982

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Letter from Hall to McNair, October 11, 1982, Colby College Special Collections

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 11 October 1982

Wesley McNair
Box 43
North Sutton, NH 03260

Dear Wes,

I don’t have a current price list for the American
Stationery Co., because I just [ordered] a whole bunch of
things. If you write a postcard to them at Peru, Indiana,
they will send you a catalogue. I have no doubt! Their
price has gone up enormously fantastically – and I suppose
it is still the cheapest thing anywhere around. I find the
postcards wonderfully cheap. But the price you pay, as it
were, is that you have no variety. The minute you start
paying for variety, you pay them more… The stuff that I
use comes in blue, for the small stationery…blue ink that
is…and black for the typewriter size… Blue for the postcards.
And exactly the same typeface… That is why it’s cheap.

I love the poems, and am starting to send them out.

I have one suggestion – the title of “The Ice Retreats
In Sutton” is cliché and dead metaphor. Military metaphor of
retreating. The poem is so much better than that! Why not
just say something like “After the Ice”?

Refresh my memory – so I can pass it on down street to
Joey… Do you have poems still coming out in Poetry? Do
you have a poem still coming out in the Atlantic?

Stay tuned for the latest bulletins. But don’t stay up.
“When Paul Flew Away” so beautiful… The grammar made me nervous
until I saw that it was consistent, and a form of speech…

Best as ever,

Don

 

McNair to Hall: October 6, 1982

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Letter from McNair to Hall, October 6, 1982, Page 1, Milne Special Collections and Archives, University of New Hampshire

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 October 6, 1982

Dear Don,

Diane bought me this, and while I’m glad to have
it and like it, I would really prefer stationery
a bit simpler–and cheaper. Would you send me
sometime the address of the company which does yours?
You mentioned once that prices there are low. Does
the company offer a variety of typefaces for name
and address?

Your notes about poems, sent so quickly after
my questions, have been enormously helpful. I
would be lost without your sympathetic and insightful
comments. Thank you.

If you like the enclosed–or any part of
what’s here–please pass it on to Joey. If you
have reservations, I will welcome your letter about
them. I am at work (always) on others, but they
may be awhile. I had hoped for two more for
this batch, but they remain under their stone,
until some later resurrection!

By the way, I did send the book to Costanzo–
this, after your OK.

The attached check is for Ploughshares poems,

2/

which earned $25.

Fall is lovely here–the trees beautiful,
even as their leaves fall. We live in such light!

I think of your fall, pleasantly
haunted by memories of kicking leaves against
the house–and by the Blue Ghost. I trust
you are enjoying the season!

Love to you and Jane,

Wes

A note from McNair about this letter: The enclosed poem is “When Paul Flew Away.” “Blue Ghost” on page two of this letter is a reference to Don’s short lyric, “Mount Kearsarge.”

Read Mount Kearsarge (published version)

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