Aliya Weiss

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Dear Don,

In my haste to take care of my
own business in my last letter, I
neglected to tell you how much
I – we all – enjoyed your book,
The Ox-Cart Man. I expect it
will be in our family for a long
time to come. I can easily see why
kids enjoy it, just as the kid
in me enjoyed the original poem.
Maybe it will even touch some
of them to like poetry!
Anyway, I’m glad I finally
got a chance to see it. It’s
a very nice little book.

Love,

Wes

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Dear Don,

Yes, a later revision of the poem I just
sent. Nor does this revision rid me of
apprehensions – though I do think the title (my original one)
is better, along with the description of the
second baseman, and the fielders with their gloves.

Here it is anyway, with apologies
for the confusion I’m causing.

Love,

Wes

P.S. (August 31) – Diane told me
yesterday of your congratulations and of
the significance of “placement” in
Poetry. Both things make me very happy.
And they remind me that I owe
Joey $6.00_, which I send with profoundest
gratitude to both of you.

THE SLOW CHILDREN PLAY BASEBALL

The girl with mild eyes stands
with both feet on first base,
and the shortstop smiles at nothing
he can remember exactly.
Now the large-faced boy on second
raises his hands, making the precise shape
of a ball. The ball
is already over the outfield.
Some are watching it fall,
an outfielder, the astonished batter
beginning to run. Slowly they see
it is time to wave their arms
and let their voices go. Slowly, joyfully,
the fielders are throwing their gloves,
and the batters are jumping
higher and higher in this moment
for which they have come,
this forgetting so complete
they do not know why they are shouting.

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Dear Don,

I am worried about the enclosed poem.
Will you please tell me if it is any good?

Thanks,
Wes

THE RETARDED CHILDREN PLAY BASEBALL

The girl with mild eyes stands
with both feet on first base,
and the shortstop smiles at nothing
he can remember exactly.
Now the soft-faced boy on second
raises his hands, making the precise shape
of a ball. The ball
is already over the outfield.
Some are watching it fall,
an outfielder, the astonished batter
beginning to run. Slowly they see
it is time to wave their arms
and let their voices go. Slowly, joyfully,
the fielders are hurling their gloves,
and the batters are jumping
higher and higher in this moment
for which they have come,
this forgetting so complete
they do not know why they are shouting.

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Dear Don,

My response to your recent letter has been delayed because I’ve
been away for a couple of days. But it is good to have your advice
about E.V. Griffith and your comments about the fat poem.

I will be careful not to send Griffith anything unpublished,
and I will certainly revise the fat poem, keeping your suggestions
in mind as I do so. I’m still not sure what I will do about the
poem’s epigraph. You are certainly right about the ascription,
I’ve come to feel, and you may well be right about leaving the
whole business out. Later on, I will perhaps be able to see more
clearly what is needed.

In the meantime, the sending-out of the manuscript continues.
Viking and Random House responded positively to my preliminary letter,
the same one I sent Atlantic Monthly Press and others, and so I’ve
just sent copies of the book to them.

As always, I shall keep you informed about whatever may develop.
I hope your writing goes well, and that you are keeping cool in
spite of our heavy humidity which no rain seems to lighten.

Best,

Wes

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Dear Don,

Foiled again. I had thought the “Fat” poem was
finished. But you have convinced me that I should wait
and try it again later.

You mentioned that I should probably drop the
epigraph. I am troubled by this because the
epigraph provides background for the stanza

Others saw the fat
Was their responsibility

(remember the fat people “had to be fat because it was
cold”). I can perhaps write about “cold”
without the epigraph – or leave cold out entirely –
but I can’t see how to make the above stanza
work without it (the epigraph).

Maybe I could kill the above stanza, but I’d
hate to.

Anyway, I am pleased to have your comments
on the poem, and I will be sure to read them
again when the time comes to re-revise. If

2/

anything comes to mind re: the comments I’ve made
here, please let me know.

In the meantime, I am sending you “Calling
Harold,” grateful that you liked it and found it
complete, however small the poem may be. I
guess I will just write Peter Davison and tell
him I have passed on his request for poems
to the Amaryllis agency, which handles my
poems. Does this seem right? Then Joey
can do what he wants to do about it.

I am also sending “When Superman Died.”
Thanks for clarifying.

Will you please tell Jane that E.V. Griffith,
Editor of Poetry Now, is looking for poems
for an anthology called Poets Now, “an
anthology of 80 new poets who seem likely to
win growing recognition in the decade ahead.”
The deadline for submissions is November 30.
Griffith’s address is 3118 K Street, Eureka,
California 95501. He’s asking for 10-15
poems from each submitting poet.

3/

As you may have guessed, I am interested
in submitting poems to Griffith, especially
since he has accepted work of mine in the past,
for both Hearse and Poetry Now. I have not
submitted yet, because I’m not sure whether I
or Joey should do it. I’ve been thinking of
mailing Griffith Going Back Poems – the whole
book – so he’ll have plenty to choose from.
If Joey feels the submission should be made
through the agency, I’ll simply send him a copy
of the book, complete with envelope and stamps.

Please ask him about this. Thanks for everything.

Love,

Wes

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Dear Don,

Finally I find the time to write you about the poems
you sent!

I do like them — all of them — very much. I believe
that “6 October 1980” is one of the most moving poems
you ever wrote, so complicated and profound are the
feelings of sonship which it expresses. It is a
wonderful thing. “Epithalamion” is also a wonderful
poem. The “positioning” of each of your reluctant
characters is perfect — Emily in the cellar “vanishing
against a pillar” (just the right word, that
“against”!) and Walt in the belltower with
the muscular young sexton. I love that piece. And
I love “Sonnet.” The last stanza of that poem is
just delicious in its sounds and imagery. I
believe that “Marbles,” “A Novel in Two Volumes,”
and “Scenic View” are also good, strong poems.

I have suggestions about how certain aspects
of the other poems might be revised – suggestions
which I hope will be helpful. One of my favorite
poems in its potential^”Poultry” is still, I think, not
quite finished. I very much like the way seasons
turn throughout the poem, the way the life and death
of poultry suggests to both boy participant and
adult narrator the transcience [sic] of human life. What
I feel the poem needs is a fuller reference to Luther…
or perhaps references to people other than Luther, who

2/

were alive once to eat the meals the poultry made, and who
are now dead. Without more allusions to Luther (at the
table, “leading in the singing of “hymns”, your word noted on
page 4? with others?) the poem’s conclusion seems to me
arbitrary. I do find the descriptions of chicks, chickens
and roosters most convincing, however…I love the
rooster section. One other question: In the 4th
stanza, should the phrase “when the egg making frenzy”
be changed to a phrase which more closely approximates
the other indented phrases of the section, which seem to
convey the continuous action of the hens in time
(moving toward “consumed”)?

About “The Glass.” If I have your intentions right:
it seems to me the poem should be presented in 3 stanzas.
I think the first stanza should speak of the world of
“permanence”; the second stanza, about the speaker’s
“heroic” movement through time, which leads to reading
the news about Emily Farr’s death; the third stanza,
about the glass. I especially like the image of the “old
man carrying buckets/among pale ferns under
wavering birches,” and I do believe this poem could
be quite wonderful, even though it is not (or so I
think) fully realized at this point.

“Fires for Tending.” I feel the poem should begin

3/

with the reading of the obituaries. The prologue of the first
three lines gives so strong an emphasis to the comfortable
domestic rituals and environment of the narrator’s
present that the movement into the past does not
achieve the importance that I believe it ought to have
in the poem. I feel that if the first 3 lines were cast
and the ordering were changed slightly, the narrator would
read his news, recollect the experience of the past,
and return to the surroundings of his present life,
feeling his old attachment to them, along with an
unsettling detachment. (This tension between attachment
and detachment comes through wonderfully well, I think,
in the last 2 lines.) Another thing about the conclusion:
I feel that the story should not be characterized as
“ordinary,” since that characterization stills the reverberations
that the memory might have. Incidentally, I wonder if
the full-out statement declaration of the last stanza – the “I
will preserve” should be replaced with a phrasing
which stresses the struggle against the fact of
forgetting…or against “the forgetful kingdom of death,”
as J.C. Ransom called it. I don’t mean to suggest
that the “struggle” should be expressed in any dramatic way –
only that it might be hinted at… I do hope I
have not written here about a poem which I might
write, rather than about the poem which this one might
become.

4/

“Whip Poor Will.” I feel that the last line of the poem
should refer somehow to the whip-poor-will’s “voice-lessness”
during the day. Stilling the bird’s song would be a bitter
way, I think, to bring the narrator and reader back to the
“real” world of the last stanza. Also, I like your
penned-in lines “but the real/bird lifts away”
better than the 1st and 2nd lines that appear in
the typed version of the last stanza. I wonder, too,
if the whip-poor-will’s flight into “far dark fields”
in the stanza one might be more strongly linked with
the bird’s flight into the narrator’s dream, which is
suggested in stanza two. The possible link between the
two seems to be cut off by the rooster’s crowing and
by the light of the second stanza. I think that the
“cock-crow” should be cut out, and that the darkness
of stanza one should extend into stanza 2, at least
until the reader is able to catch the connection
between the flight into dark fields and the flight
into the mind. The light, then, might foreshadow
the awakening to “reality” which eventually happens –
even as it (the light) suggests Wesley Wells,
who began his day at dawn.

If I have misread your intentions anywhere
with my suggestions recommendations, I am sorry. I certainly want
to be a help to you and not a hindrance. I feel this

5/

is a very strong group of poems, and I thank you
very much for letting me see them.

But no more ado. I must get this into
the mail!

With love,

Wes
[McNair]