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1980

McNair to Hall: October 11, 1980

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McNair-to-Hall-10-11-1980

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 October 11, 1980

Dear Don,

Well, I was hoping the poem was better than you appear to think.
I will just have to wait for awhile and then look at it again to see
what can be done. Thank you for your thoughts, as always.

I write to ask for still another favor. Would you be willing
to send a recommendation for me to the placement office of Associated
Writing Programs?

The reason I need the recommendation is that I want to leave
Colby-Sawyer. I need a place that is more stimulating, and which
takes up less of my writing time. I have been hoping to leave for some
years, actually, but it has taken me a long time, as you know, to get
degrees and publications in order. For an extra advantage in job-hunting
it would be nice, of course, to have the book placed. But who knows?
Maybe the book will be published soon enough to give my applications
a push. In the meantime, I will just have to hope that my publications,
grants and recommendations will serve well enough.

I would not be asking for the recommendation at all if I were
planning to apply for a position in American studies. As it happens,
I have a fairly complete dossier (at Middlebury) in those areas. But
I’ve decided to apply for jobs in creative writing (an area in which
I’ve done some teaching in the past), or in a combination of creative
writing and literature. That is, I plan finally to adjust my teaching
assignment to my real self, kept secret for so long! And for that I need
a different sort of statement.

I do know how painful recommendation-writing can be. If it is too
painful at the moment—because you are busy with poems, textbook
revisions, or freshman themes—please feel free to wait. The AWP dossier
will have at least two other recommendations in it by the end of next
week. Yours can come along later if you wish.

The jobs I’m interested in right now, by the way, come from the
most recent AWP job notice. One is at Arizona State; the other, at
Loyola University of Chicago. As I say, I am a little nervous about
not having placed my book before applying to these places, or to any others.
Under the circumstances, a comment from you about the manuscript I now
have probably wouldn’t hurt, if you wouldn’t mind furnishing one.

Incidentally, I did get a bit of good news the other day. Alan
Pater, editor of the Anthology of Magazine Verse & Yearbook of Am. Poetry,

2/

wrote to ask me for permission to reprint “The Bald Spot” in the 1981
volume of his anthology, going shortly to press. All hail to Joey
for placing the poem in Poetry in the first place!

Thanks again for your comments on my poem. I hope you are enjoying
the foliage around Eagle Pond Farm.

Love,

Wes

P.S.—I enclose an addressed, stamped envelope for your convenience.

Editorial note about this letter: The poem referred to in the first paragraph is “Waving Goodbye,” which Hall assesses in his final letter of Section III.

Read Waving Goodbye (published version)

See also a selection of McNair’s manuscript notes and drafts for “Waving Goodbye.”

Hall to McNair: October 6, 1980

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Hall-to-McNair-10-6-1980

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 6 October 1980

Wes McNair
Box 43
N. Sutton, NH 03260

Dear Wes,

I don’t think I like it quite so much. Something willful
about it, I think, maybe in the abstraction. Yet I like the
middle of it a lot. I don’t really believe the metaphor of
“the name/ given to air/ we shape…” I like the father with
son, with sisters and brothers… the middle part there. Then
on the second page I don’t really follow it when it gets to be
“rounder…” Then I think that the ending is pretty and invisible,
with the metaphor of “trace.”

So I am fairly negative, I suppose – yet I should say:
without perfect confidence in my negativity, the way I usually
have!

Joey keeps busy, but editors are slow as molasses.

Love as ever,

Don

A note from McNair about this letter: I quickly abandoned “Waving Goodbye,” the poem in question here, but it returned many years later, less abstract in its conception, fastened down by human experience. The final version of “Waving Goodbye, published in my 1998 collection Talking in the Dark, appears below. Sometimes the creative cycle a poem requires is long, and “Waving Goodbye” took nearly as long as “The Retarded Children Play Baseball” to think through. So this section of letters ends with a kind of promise to my future development as a poet.

Read Waving Goodbye (published version)

See also a selection of McNair’s manuscript notes and drafts for “Waving Goodbye.”

McNair to Hall: September 28, 1980

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mcnair-to-hall-09-28-1980

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 September 28, 1980

Dear Don,

Will you let me know sometime what you think
of the enclosed?

Thanks –

Love,
Wes

WAVING GOODBYE

Waving goodbye is the name
given to air
we shape with others,

husband and wife
gently touching
the distance

growing between them,
which is not air
exactly, not emptiness,

but what together
they are making, the almost
invisible thing

the father makes
with his son, stroking the air
as if it might break,

what all the sisters
and brothers, waving together,
letting go,

are bringing to life,
not emptiness, not the shape
of our sadness,

but rounder, and light
enough to lift up
as we turn,

rising above
the terminal, above
the heavy streets,

invisible
but for the loving
trace of hands.

 

Hall to McNair: September 17, 1980

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Hall-to-McNair-09-17-1980

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 17 September 1980

Wes McNair
Box 43
North Sutton, NH 03260

Dear Wes,

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.

Read The Last Peaceable Kingdom  (published version)

McNair to Hall: September 13, 1980

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McNair-to-Hall-09-13-1980

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 September 13, 1980

Dear Don,

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.

Read Memory of Kuhre (published version)

Hall to McNair: September 12, 1980

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Hall-to-McNair-09-12-1980

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12 Sept. 1980

Dear Wes,

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,

Don

Hall to McNair: September 11, 1980

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Hall-to-McNair-09-11-1980

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 11 September 1980

Wes McNair
Box 43
North Sutton, NH 03260

Dear Wes,

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

the body dream

3
above our heads
the thin scream

of pipes dissolves
the corners of rooms

and feet walk past us
in space

free of the tables
lamps and chairs

which hold us here
dying of definition

McNair to Hall: September 10, 1980

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McNair-to-Hall-09-10-1980

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 September 10, 1980

Dear Don,

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.”

 

McNair to Hall: September 9, 1980

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McNair-to-Hall-09-09-1980

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 Sept 9, 1980

Dear Don,

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

the body dream

3

above our heads
the faint scream

of pipes dissolves
the corners of rooms

and feet walk past us
in space

free of the tables
lamps and chairs

which hold us here
dying of definition

McNair to Hall: September 9, 1980

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McNair-to-Hall-09-09-1980

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 September 9, 1980

Dear Don,

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.

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