Joey will be sending it out, and asked me to remind you
to put your name on the poems, upper righthand corner, or
a few spaces after the end of them – in typing, when you
type them up in the future.
I do think that “thin” is better than “faint,” though
also rather familiar, in the context.
I’m not sure which five poems! I do like a great great
many of them, and I like a great great many of them a great
great deal! Why don’t you see if you have a sense which five
are the most popular with most of the people whom you know…
which would be more reliable than just one person’s opinion.
I would surely include the Peaceable Kingdom, always, in
everything… The Poetry two are wonderful… And I think
that… well, don’t include Elinor, simply because too many
people do not seem to respond to it. (It spends its life
in the U.S. mails, still.)
As a matter of fact, I think you are quite consistent.
That is, I don’t think five stick out. I guess it would be
obvious that the adolescent dream poems would not be among
the five. Maybe I would take negative votes – your own,
based upon what you have heard from others – more seriously
even than the positive ones.
Best as ever,
Don
A note from McNair about this letter: To view the ill-fated Elinore Quelch poem in manuscript, which I agreed was not up to grade, click here.
While I am delighted that Joey finds “The People Upstairs”
“absolutely perfect” (his enthusiasm for my poetry is, after
all, one of the main things that keeps me going), I am also glad
to have your more reflective judgement [sic] of the poem.
I did worry about “faint scream” as a cliché, and I am
sure you are right that the phrase should be changed. I hope you
feel as I do that the new word of 3 is more resonant (in all
senses) than “faint”. I also hope you like the change in 1.
Please feel free to let me know if otherwise.
I have decided to go with the rest of it. “Weightless”
[Written in margin: It’s also the enjambment
which the word makes possible, in the preceding line that
I’d have trouble replacing -]
and “earshot” seem to me irreplaceable, and if 2 doesn’t say
enough, I can’t see how to fix it. At this point, it does feel
right to me. Or right enough that I am ready, with Valery, to
abandon it.
I always worry about these poems which depend so much on
the space around themselves to complete their utterance…That is,
I worry that the space does more for me than it might for the
reader. In this poem, visual space should become aural, and both kinds of space should contribute to the “distance” between
upstairs and downstairs. I have tried for similar effects with
the page around the poem in “Memory of Kuhre” and “Elinore Quelch”,
and while I am reasonably sure the first of the two works, I
do not know about the Quelch poem. Nobody seems to like that one.
I hope you like this piece, in any event. If you do, please
give it to Joey.
One more thing: Would you please let me know which five
poems you think I should send to Houghton Mifflin? I should be
writing them soon.
Thanks!
Love,
Wes
A note from McNair about this poem: Eventually, Don’s “reflective judgment” about “The People Upstairs” as well as my own led to pulling the piece from my book-length manuscript of poems; I also dropped the verse about Elinore Quelch (See Elinore Quelch). However, I “raided” parts of “The People Upstairs” for my later poem “The Longing of the Feet,” whose published version is available in the footnote of the letter from June 3, 1982.
Do not touch your office. I have plenty of room
there. After all, I am teaching only one class, only
ten students so far – though I’m supposed to have
thirteen – and I’m only there a couple of hours a
week. I take the girls files home with me, because I
do my preparation at home… Therefore, I have plenty
of room, as it is, and don’t want you to disturb your-
self at all.
Sometimes when you fill out forms, you have to
suppress things! Not really I guess. You can’t help
what John Nims is going to do. Mostly, magazines ask
you to tell them what you want to be mentioned in the
bio-note. Love as ever,
Joey thinks “The People Upstairs” is absolutely perfect,
and will be delighted to send it out, but I see a couple of
things I am not so sure of, so I persuaded him to let me
write you about the poem before he sends it out.
In the first one, I think that “drifting” is a classic
dead metaphor. I’m not crazy about “weightless” either, but
I really dislike “drifting,” which is a distinctly unanchored
unrowboat. I’m not so positive about “ ,” when you
come to that…
In the third part, it is “faint scream” that bothers me,
not the article. It is because screams have been faint since
the beginning of creation. I think everything else is just
fine here. I’m not absolutely positive about the end of the
second part, which is the difficult part. But there’s nothing
wrong with the diction! (I am just not positive that it is
all there or that it is said with as much clarity and force
as need be.) But I feel fairly sure about drifted and faint.
If you feel equally sure, in the other direction, I
will pass the word to Joey.
Love as ever,
Don
Editorial note about this letter: After Don’s small complaints about “The People Upstairs,” McNair sent him this revised draft in his ensuing letter.
The People Upstairs
1
each night
we hear them
ascending the stairs
descending
deeper and deeper
into the floor
falling while rising
away from themselves
their weightless voices
moving out
of earshot far
into the next world
2
o feet
forgotten servants
left out
of the conversation
of mind and hands
we hear you
waiting
under the desk
we understand
your great patience
and your
mystery moving
beyond the cloud
of ceiling carrying
Thanks for your letter, with its variety of responses to my
questions and comments.
Thanks, too, for your advice about bio notes. Actually, I was
surprised at what was written about me in Poetry. The write-up
was not derived from any statement I sent, but from a rather
extensive questionnaire which I filled out about jobs, publications,
grants and even “plans.”
The fact is, though, that I never even considered the dangers of
sounding “successful” when I filled out the form – nor did I
think much about sounding “academic.” You are right that I
should think about these things. What matters, anyway, is not
that stuff but the poems themselves; which is part of your
point.
Yes, “objectivity” is clearly beside the point in “The
Slow Children,” as your quotations make plain. You help
to clear my head for the later revision. No, I do not
hold onto poems when I first think they are finished,
which perhaps explains why I send you revisions after
I have sent you what seemed to be the final version. It
takes me so long to finish a poem, I guess, I am
overly anxious to have someone else read it, like it
and confirm that I really can go on to other work.
I will have to work on this impulse….
You have my prayers as you start at Colby – and
a question. Since (as I have been told) you are using
my office at Colby, maybe you would like me to clean
out my desk and cabinets? I had no idea you would
be there, though I probably could have figured it out.
Let me do this: I will clean out the desk and the
small cabinet to the right of the desk. Then you will
have room for whatever you may need to store. Is
that suitable? While you wait for whatever the prayers
may bring, I can at least deliver you from storage problems!
I will try to take care of this by the end of the
weekend.
Until then, may God be with you.
Love,
Wes
A note from McNair about this letter:The issue Don has raised about the need to hold onto poems before showing them begins to take effect here and returns in my correspondence later on (for instance, in the letter of Section IV dated October 22, 1980), becoming one of Don’s most influential notions about revision, second only to his injunction about the possibility of publishing a book or getting a grant: “Expect nothing.”
I seem never to run out of
afterthoughts. This time, I only
want to change an article
(“the” to “a”) in poem 3
of “The People Upstairs.” Oh, well-
at least this will arrive with
the other stuff. The enclosed becomes
the final version of 3.
Wes
A note from McNair about this letter: Below is the text of the poem “The People Upstairs” as I sent it in this letter. The poem is a response to the footfall of tenants in our North Sutton farmhouse as they ascended the stairway to their upstairs apartment, and lived their lives above our heads.
The People Upstairs
1
each night
we hear them
ascending the stairs
descending
deeper and deeper
into the floor
falling while rising
away from themselves
their weightless voices
drifting out
of earshot far
into the next world
2
o feet
forgotten servants
left out
of the conversation
of mind and hands
we hear you
waiting
under the desk
we understand
your great patience
and your
mystery moving
beyond the cloud
of ceiling carrying
Your recent letter about submissions of my poems reminds me
that the cycle of submission starts in the fall – and that Joey
has only a few things of mine to send. Therefore, in spite
of my earlier thought about holding onto poems, I have decided
to send you the enclosed. If you think it is ready, please
give it to Joey. It is not a “biggie,” but it may be
worth something to him.
Incidentally, I just saw an ad for the Dorrance
publishing company. Is this a legitimate house, or
is it, as I suspect, a vanity press?
Found the “one question” you got from Cowley’s book
most instructive – and enjoyed the rest of your review
in the Times.
Love,
Wes
Editorial note about this letter: The poem enclosed is “The People Upstairs,” the text of which appears in the next letter.
Thanks for your letters. I’m really pleased that
you liked Ox Cart Man. I do not think of it as a poem, though
it is set in irregular lines… Just a way of phrase-grouping,
and slowing down… They wanted to call it a poem on the jacket,
but I wouldn’t let them. Actually, I imagine it is a good
selling point not to call it a poem! … though that was not
my reason.
I am thinking some more about the Slow Children –
though I know from your last letter that you have put it
aside anyway. You know, you are presuming to go inside
their minds, therefore not being “objective”… “Smiles at
nothing/ he can remember exactly.” “…the astonished…”
I wonder if it is possible – it will be a completely different
poem – to make it actually objective?
Probably it is best to hold poems back for a long time
before sending them to a friend. I think you do that
already. Jane and I have learned to do that even from each
other. More or less to keep something around, looking at it
daily for two months or so, before we will even show it to
each other. Because it has a way of changing on its own, before
anybody else’s words get into it.
It was really such a pleasure to see those good poems
in Poetry! … Oh, one more bit of sage, elderly, Polonius-like
advice. For a biographical note, I think it is wise not to
emphasize fellowships or academic appointments. I do not mean
that the note in Poetry is any serious gaffe or anything, honest
to goodness! But I think that in general, people just get mad
at you if they think you have had four thousand grants, which
would be my general impression if I just scanned your note
briefly, and they tend not to like poets who are Deans and
Vice-Presidents – which is what being director of the American
Studies Program sounds a little bit like. I think that the
most effective kind of biographical note is something that is
quite reticent, non-academic, and non-“successful.” “Wesley
McNair lives in New Hampshire where he raises goats with eyes
in the middle of their foreheads.”
I went to the faculty meeting on Friday, not the faculty
meeting – the English Department meeting. You will probably get
this on Wednesday, my first day of teaching. Pray for me. Pray
for my girls.
Yes, Jim Wright’s “Venice” is wonderful, and there are
many terrific things in this posthumous book of his.
Love to you all, as ever,
Don
A note from McNair about this letter: Though Don’s and my conversation about “The Retarded Children Play Baseball” is almost over with this letter, off-and-on work with the poem was just beginning. In fact, I puzzled over how to write the poem off and on for nearly fifteen years, finally publishing the version below in my collection, Talking in the Dark. I actually completed the poem two or three years earlier, but magazine editors would not publish it, perhaps in part because they found its term “retarded” pejorative. Even sensing this, I decided to risk my title, since it reflected in its way the condescending attitude of the children’s teachers, and besides, my poem balked at substituting politically correct terms for the title such as “mentally handicapped” or “mentally challenged.”
As always, you are right about my poem, and right
that it should be left for awhile. After my frenzied
correspondence about it, I sat down and read it, I mean really read it, and I saw that I must try to reveal
more of the innocence of the “slow children,” so that the last
line suggests their ability to break free even of the
circumstances which led to their joy, into “pure joy.”
What made me nervous, too, was that the poem was
too close to making fun of the children. I went too
far, I think, towards trying to be “objective” in
my presentation of them, fearing that I might become
sentimental if I allowed myself too much sympathy.
It may well turn out that the hard part is done –
ie, I already have the situation I need for the poem,
some of its images and the kind of pacing I need.
The movement of the poem towards the “innerness” of
the slow children – that pacing – took a long time
to get, and I don’t expect that part to change much. Also,
I still like the way they transform the game and
its meaning.
But this is a hard thing to write about, especially
given the situation of the retarded on a baseball field.
2
If I can deal with such a risky situation, I
may have a better poem for it.
But I do go on. Thanks for writing about the
poem and for being your usual shrewd self.
Thanks too for repeating what you told Diane
about the “placement” of my poems in Poetry.
You make me feel good all over again. It would
be nice if Nims took other stuff.
Oh – and my lips are sealed about your secret.
My own secret is that I do not have to feel sorry
for myself this term. One good thing about being
there instead of here would be the chance to see
you to talk every now and then. But maybe
we can manage that here, with a get-together soon.
It’s better with bourbon, anyway.
I am going to try not to send you anything
for awhile now. I do have poems,
and many things underway, too – perhaps too
many. But I feel I should keep them in my own
head for awhile.
So – until then –
Love,
Wes
P.S. Did you see the poem “Venice” by James Wright
in the June Poetry? Wasn’t that fine?
A week from today I teach my first class. This Friday
I go to a department meeting. I know it is ridiculous, dis-
gusting, and revolting – but I practically feel sorry for
myself, and here I am teaching only one course in three years!
Do not tell anybody my disgusting secret.
I don’t know why this poem doesn’t work but you are
perfectly right to be worried about it. It does not work.
It makes me nervous all the way through, and not nervous in
a good way. It trembles on at the side of making fun of them,
and somehow or other that is too dreadful. Yet it is a wonderful
idea, and I would think that there is a wonderful poem here –
but not yet, and not in these words. I would put it deep in a
far drawer, “forget about it,” so far as you can, and discover
it by accident three years from now, sit down and write it out
perfectly. Well, that is what I would like to do, if I were
you. I would not struggle with it now. It is not a matter of
just changing a word here or there. It is something profounder
going on here.
I was delighted to see the poems in Poetry! They really
look good. And as I told Diane, old Nims puts them in a place
of honor. One is honored to be either first or last of the
group of poets there. This has been true forever and ever.
It means he thinks well of you. After we hear from the Atlantic,
unless the Atlantic buys everything we send them, we will go
back to see if we can sell some more to Nims. That’s a good
place to publish.
Best as ever,
Don
Will write on the new version
tomorrow.
A note from McNair about this letter:The class Don refers to at the outset of this letter is the one he is teaching at Colby-Sawyer College to prepare notes for a new edition of his college textbook on composition, Writing Well.
