At the same time Wesley McNair was revising the individual poems he chose for his book (see revision links in the text of The Unfastening), he was revising the book itself. This diagram, which includes three book manuscripts selected from a longer series, follows the process of that revision. The contents of each manuscript are in chronological order, and the entry at the far left shows how The Unfastening began. Subsequent entries reveal how individual poems were deleted, repositioned and added (11 new poems and a new section) as McNair developed the themes of his book. The fourth entry provides the definitive poem list as seen in the proofs for the book, sent to McNair by his publisher, David R. Godine. By drawing your cursor over poem titles, you can follow the changes that took place during an intense revision period that lasted just over a year.
Once you have explored the poems of The Unfastening, return to this page and take some time to answer the Guiding Questions, which link the map to McNair’s intentions as he developed the themes of his book.
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