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Aliya Weiss

About Aliya Weiss

http://www.colby.edu/directory_cs/acweiss/

Posts by Aliya Weiss:

McNair to Hall: April 14, 1980

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McNair-to-Hall-04-14-1980

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 April 14, 1980

Dear Don,

How lovely to receive your poems in
the mail. How much I am enjoying
them! I have read them already several
times.

I am writing this letter to thank
you for them – and to let you know
that though I will not be sending them
immediately, I will certainly be
“working on them.” I always need time
to let poems settle – my own or
anyone else’s.

I promise a letter about them
soon – am taking them with me
to Detroit and will be back with
a full response. Thank you again
for letting me see them.

Love,

Wes

McNair to Hall: April 8, 1980

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McNair-to-Hall-04-08-1980

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 April 8, 1980

Dear Don,

You asked in your recent note whether I
had sent poems to Houghton Mifflin. The answer
is yes. I mailed five poems to the readers
for the “New Poetry Series,” to no avail.
I did not mention your name (as you earlier
said I might) because that seemed inappropriate
in an open competition: Perhaps I chose the
wrong five poems…I can always
rationalize that way.

More bad news yesterday. I got my rejection
from the National Poetry Series. At the
bottom of their form letter was a note
(unsigned) informing me that I had sent
“good work.” I don’t feel much heartened
by that, but I suppose it’s better than nothing.

I do appreciate your continuing faith
in the publish-ability of the book. You
lift my spirits every time I’m down about

2/

its fate! In spite of your wise
injunction to “expect nothing,” I am now
hoping for a good word from the Pitt Poetry
Series. You will remember that Ed Ochester
asked me to resubmit my manuscript
there this year, having turned it down last
year. I should hear by June.

I am enormously pleased that you like
“The Fat Enter Heaven” and that Jane
likes it. I have been working on a longer
“fat poem” for some time now, and on
other poems, but I am so slow I almost
lose patience with myself.

Next week I go to Detroit to lecture
on Winslow Homer at the joint meeting of the
Popular Culture and American Culture Associations.
That will perhaps provide the brief respite I
need to jar some poems loose!

Love to you and Jane,

Wes

A note from McNair about this letter: The “longer fat poem” I’m working on when I write this letter is “The Fat People of the Old Days.”

 

Hall to McNair: April 2, 1980

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Hall-to-McNair-04-02-1980

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 2 April 1980

Wes McNair
Box 43
N. Sutton, NH 03260

Dear Wes,

Thanks for the letter. Sorry I had not mentioned
receiving this. I love it, and it is with the New Yorker.
I did not show it to Jane before, so I took the opportunity
to show her this. As I knew she would, she enjoys adores it. I
think maybe you get better and better!

Sorry to be the one to have to tell you about Jim Wright’s
death. I guess there had been no news of it in the Globe
or any place. It will hit the poetry press in all the next
issues! There was a long obituary in the New York Times.

I am sorry that Fran is no longer able to consider
the manuscript at Harper & Row! I guess she had to send
it back, because she is going away for two months now, to
Europe and India, and she has not signed on with any new
house. And also, as she says, the scene in New York is absolutely
horrible.

Did you not send a sample into Houghton Mifflin, and
Jon Galassi? You probably told me what happened, but I
cannot remember. Refresh me please. I have a tremendous
habit of forgetting things, which I like to think is somewhat-
deliberate, as a way of dealing with seventy-nine different
items in the course of every day that I live. It is probably
my excuse for incipient senility.

I do have some other notions about the book, but nothing
that I can be concrete about right now, and nothing to be
excited about. But I keep it in mind!

Best to you both as ever,

Don

McNair to Hall: March 29, 1980

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McNair-to-Hall-03-29-1980

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 March 29, 1980

Dear Don,

I was sorry to learn of James Wright’s death. It must have been
a very tough thing for you. Has there been any news of it in the press?
I have not read of it anywhere outside of your letter.

I came to Wright’s poetry late, though I did encounter the
Eisenhower/Franco poem (can’t remember the title exactly, and can’t
find the poem) earlier on, and I still remember the thrill of reading it.
I saw the Wright poems in your Contemporary American Poetry early, too,
but it was much later that I got to his books. Needless to say, he has
left many beautiful poems behind.

You are quite welcome to compliments about String Too Short To Be
Saved. And about the poems. I realize now that I did not mention
in my letter one of my favorite poems from The Alligator Bride – I
mean “Mount Kearsage”. Ever since you did your reading at Colby, that
poems has stuck with me. I can still hear the way you said its
wonderful last line, “blue ghost”. I often think of that poem as I
drift downward towards Crockett’s Corners from Colby and that mountain
rises before me.

Incidentally, I heard not long ago from Fran McCullough, who
sent my manuscript back saying she had hoped to publish it with
Harper and Row, but now could not and did not expect to be able to –
since it was a first book – with any of the houses she might join in
the future. I was pleased that she had taken the manuscript seriously
enough to advocate its publication, though, obviously, I was
disappointed to have it returned. I do appreciate all your help in
bringing the book to her attention. Who knows but before too long
your opinion of the book will be vindicated. Though you have warned
me to “expect nothing”, I can’t help hoping.

I am beginning to worry that you did not receive a copy of the
new-improved “Fat Enter Heaven”, since I have not heard from you
about it. I believe you were off somewhere doing a reading when I
sent the copy, so perhaps you never saw it. Anyway, I enclose another
copy for your perusal.

Diane tells me to say she has finished String and loved it.

Best from us both,

Wes

Read Mount Kearsarge (published version)

Read The Fat Enter Heaven (published version)

Hall to McNair: March 26, 1980

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Hall-to-McNair-03-26-1980

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 26 March 1980

Wes McNair
Box 43
N. Sutton, NH 03260

Dear Wes,

Many thanks for the letter and the poem.

Probably you know that Jim Wright died
yesterday morning. He had cancer, and would
only have suffered terribly for a few months,
if the cancer had taken its predicted course.
Pneumonia cut him off. I was with him last
Saturday, and it was terrible. I was with him
two weeks before also. Jim knew he was going
to die, when I saw him Saturday. Sometime I
will tell you about it. It is difficult to
talk about.

I’m terribly pleased that you like String
so much, and that it led you back to the poems
and that they held up too. Thank you so much
for telling me! I saw Diane yesterday and she
told me about reading String.

I need these things! Don’t we all.

I will be putting “Hair on Television”
to good use, I hope.

Best as ever,

Don

Editorial note about this letter: Jim Wright is the poet James Wright, with whom Don had a lifelong friendship, and whose work was important to both of us.
 

McNair to Hall: March 25, 1980

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McNair-to-Hall-03-25-1980

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 March 25, 1980

Dear Don,

I want you know how much I like your book
String Too Short To Be Saved. I feel close to many
of the book’s characters because you make me feel
close to them, but also because I myself met people
like them in my experiences on farms in the Cornish
and Meridian area during the 1950’s.

I especially like the way the concluding chapter,
“Out of the Garden” manages to recapitulate earlier
themes as it states its own. The last sentence of
“Out of the Garden” is breathtaking. Still, my
favorite chapter is “The Blueberry Picking.” I have
read few things in my life so good as that reminiscence
is. It is so deeply metaphoric and yet so natural
and “real” in the experience it relates. And
what feeling one senses in the speaker as he looks
back upon the boy self in his “Thirst,” and upon
the old man who hopes the boy will “remember.”
I am just dazed by that piece.

Reading String Too Short (wonderful, wonderful title!)

2/

made me return to Kicking the Leaves to discover
new meanings in the poems of that collection.
All over again I love “Kicking the leaves”, “Flies”,
“The Black Faced Sheep,” “The Ox Cart Man,”
“Names of Horses.” I also went back to The
Alligator Bride to reread some of my favorite
poems in that – or any other – collection: “The Days,”
“The Stump,” “The Old Pilot,” “New Hampshire,”
“The Repeated Shapes,” “The Man in the Dead Machine,”
etc. And I saw for the first time how often you
are in poetry what you call yourself in String
Too Short – an “elegist.”

How wonderful it has been to read this book
and your other books through it! Now Diane
has String Too Short, and no one can tear
her away from it. (She, too, visited farmer
relations in New Hampshire when she was a girl.)
She joins me in thanking you for the book. It
is wonderful to know that a person whose work
I like so much likes my work, too!

Love,

Wes

P.S. I include “Hair on Television” for Joey’s collection
of my poems. It was rejected by APR –

Read Flies (published version)

Read The Black-Faced Sheep (published version)

Read Names of Horses (published version)

Read The Days (published version)

Read The Stump (published version)

Read The Old Pilot (published version)

Read New Hampshire (published version)

Read The Repeated Shapes (published version)

Read The Man in the Dead Machine (published version)

 

McNair to Hall: February 29, 1980

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McNair-to-Hall-02-29-1980

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 February 29, 1980

Dear Don,

Just in case I didn’t make this clear
on the hastily written postcard I sent
you today – I would very much like Joey
to have “Old Trees.” And neither of you
need worry about my sending poems to
Danbury that have been sent elsewhere,
since I will not be sending poems elsewhere.

I am just delighted that you like the
poem. I wish I had more to send.
And the fact is, I do have lots of
stuff in the notebooks, but none of it is
ready yet.

Anyway, I keep working and hoping.
In the meantime, thanks for your
comments about “Old Trees,” and for
your interest in suggesting it to Joey.

Wes

 

Hall to McNair: February 27, 1980

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Hall-to-McNair-02-27-1980

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 27 February 1980

Wes McNair
Box 43
North Sutton, NH 03260

Dear Wes,

Thanks for the manuscripts, and the letter. I think
that Old Trees is just marvelous. Very very beautiful, and
the rhythm in the new lineation is just wonderful. …And I
believe that this one has been published before, has it not?
I think you would mentioned it [sic], if it had not been. If it has
not been, please let me know right away. (Well, please let
me know anyway, because I think I will hold up on sending out
the three available poems until I heard from you about this
one for sure.)

Delighted to have The Thin Man for Harvard Magazine.
It will take a while before it comes out, I am afraid.

Agents get ten per cent, and Joey is no exception.

Good luck with the contests – and expect nothing! I talked
to Fran yesterday, and she has not yet settled on a new publishing
house, but I expect that she will soon.

Fine about having sent “Hair on Television” to the APR.
Let me know what happens, either way.

Best as ever,

Don

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