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1983

Hall to McNair: August 24, 1983

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Letter from Hall to McNair, August 24, 1983, Colby College Special Collections

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 24 August 1983

Wes McNair
Box 43
North Sutton, NH 03260

Dear Wes,

As you suspected, I cannot read the poem
now.

Very nice letter from Costanzo. I come
to trust him more and more. I was a little
leery of him, when I first met him.

It is very good about the second book
business. I should say that David Godine has
expressed some guarded interest also.

I wired him not to come that weekend,
chiefly because we were semi-hysterical with
visitors and work and the play… Then in
fact Jane went into the hospital, by ambulance!
She will be all right. It looked as if it could
be something awful, but it isn’t. It is a severe
infection of the inner ear causing total
vertigo etc. She still cannot read – but she
is perceptively better.

He wrote me as he wrote you, and over the
telephone spoke of his hope he could do a book
by you in the future… Money in the bank!

Love as ever,

Don

 

McNair to Hall: August 21, 1983

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Letter from McNair to Hall, August 21, 1983, Page 1, Milne Special Collections and Archives, University of New Hampshire

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 August 21, 1983

Dear Don,

If in this period of your crazy activity you get
a moment free, will you please take a look at the enclosed
and tell me what you think?

We look forward mightily to your play.

Love,

Wes

REMEMBERING APRONS

Who recalls the darkness
of your other life,
sewn shut

around feed grain,
or remembers your release
to join your sisters,

the dishcloths, now
ampleness and holes? Not
the absent hands

that tied you
behind the back,
already forgetting. Old

stove-gloves,
soft baskets
for tomatoes,

how thoughtlessly
they used you, and yet
how wonderful

in being left out
was your inclusion! Oh
tough dresses

without closets,
lovely petticoats
that flashed

beneath the frayed
hemlines of barncoats
all over Vermont.

–Wesley McNair

Editorial note about this letter: In the days after sending Hall his first version of “Remembering Aprons,” McNair revised the order of his third sentence, creating this final draft:

Read Remembering Aprons (published version)

McNair to Hall: August 18, 1983

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Letter from McNair to Hall, August 1983, Milne Special Collections and Archives, University of New Hampshire

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 August 18, 1983

Dear Don,

Thought you might want to see Costanzo’s
response to my letter about the Devins Award.
I was awfully pleased with his comments
about the Award, my book and future possibilities
at Carnegie-Mellon. (As you know, I am more
than half finished with book II.) Not the best
idea, probably, to photocopy someone else’s letter
and send it, but I can’t imagine Gerry
would mind my showing it to you.

Calls back and forth have already begun
with U/Missouri. Wonderfully enough, they
are interested in my ideas about the
book jacket–and other matters of presentation.

2/

I was happy to learn from Greg Martin,
their sales person, that advertising for the
book, among academic journals and poetry
magazines, will be extensive.

How wonderful it is to be writing about
a book!

We will be at your play on August 23.
Then there’s that Hale Award! You do make
our month busy!

Love,

Wes

P.S. Were you aware that Frost, the first recipient
of the Hale Award, wrote a parody of Sarah Josepha
Hale’s poem, “Mary Had a Little Lamb”? (I got
this from Raymond Holden, the poet, who spoke about
Frost in Newport before he (Holden) died.):

“Mary had a little lamb;
His name was Jesus Christ.
God, not Joseph, was the ram,
But Joseph acted nice.”
–!

——————————————————
482 Queen Anne Road
Harwich, MA 02645
August 15, 1983

Dear Wes,

Congratulations! I’m very happy for you even though a bit disappointed
that it won’t be us this time around. I think the Devins is a terrific
award. I won it and they published my first book in 1975. A year later
they produced an LP record which featured a reading of mine and the
following year’s winner. Ed King and his people have always been more
than kind to me. Missouri’s distribution is much better now that Harper
& Row is distributing for them, too.

The only problem, as you already seem to gather, is that they don’t do
any “second” books by people they begin with. But you’ll find that I’ve
been rather partial to former Devins winners at Carnegie-Mellon. Winners
I’ve published books by are John Calvin Rezmerski, Peter Cooley (not a winner
but a runner-up who they did anyway), Jonathon Holden, and Ed Ochester.

I might say that as far as I’m concerned your manuscript is the best
one to win that award in ages (probably since mine, he said humbly) and
I’m really pleased. We were to have visited Hall’s this weekend and I
was hoping to meet you, but those plans have fallen through. But have
Missouri send me a copy when it is out and we’ll review it in Three Rivers
Poetry Journal. When I get back to Pittsburgh I’ll send my copy back
to you.

Again, congratulations. This is something you really deserve.

Yours,

Jerry

A note from McNair about this letter: Days earlier, I phoned Don to tell him that the poet David Wagoner had selected The Faces of Americans in 1853 for the 1983 Devins Award (a cash prize of $500, with book publication and a public reading at the University of Missouri). He was as excited as I was.

McNair to Hall: August 12, 1983 (misdated 12/7/83)

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Letter from McNair to Hall, December 7, 1983, Page 1, Milne Special Collections and Archives, University of New Hampshire

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 12/7/83 [letter is misdated, should be 8/12/83]

Dear Don–

Thanks for the straight talk
about the poem–even though in
this particular case, it hurts.

I find that I (stupidly enough)
forgot to mention my pleasure
at seeing your poem in the
Atlantic. Always liked that one!

Will hang onto “The Faith Healer”
until the end of the summer &
then have another go at it for
new submissions.

Best,

Wes

A note from McNair about this letter: In the opening paragraph I refer to Don’s “straight talk” about “The Faith Healer.” His criticism hurt because in that poem, I felt I had found a way to deal with a father’s violence toward a son, violence that I knew from my relationship with my stepfather. As it turned out, this poem opened the way to my later poetry about that violence.

McNair to Hall: August 11, 1983

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Letter from McNair to Hall, August 3, 1983, Page 1, Milne Special Collections and Archives, University of New Hampshire

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 August 11, 1983

Dear Don,

Just wanted you to know, while you are toting up
tributes for your special issue of Ploughshares,
that “Old Trees” was requested the other day
for The Anthology of Magazine Verse & Yearbook
of American Poetry, 1984.

Will see you (if you’re there when we go)
in Peterborough!

Love,

Wes

A note from McNair about this letter:  I refer in my second paragraph to attending the new production of Don’s play, Ragged Mountain Elegies, in Peterborough, New Hampshire.

Hall to McNair: July 8, 1983

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Letter from Hall to McNair, July 8, 1983, Colby College Special Collections

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 8 July 1983

Wes McNair
Box 43
North Sutton, NH

Dear Wes,

Thanks for the poem. I don’t like this one so much, and
I cannot tell how much of it is the poem, and how much of it is
my incomprehension… I am not sure. I think that the faith
healer is speaking. But at the end, is it that he falls down
and holds onto the boy’s wheelchair, or do we learn that he is
in a wheelchair himself? I am troubled by the dialect, or what-
ever we call it when the writer does a spoken grammar. It
doesn’t sound real to me – but I don’t mean to say that it is
not real, not even like a transcription. I find it unconvincing.
Joey will be happy to send it out anyway. But it is not one
of my favorites, or not yet at any rate. I suppose I’m not
quite sure how the father did it, when the boy remains only
a chest, no limbs at all apparently. And I guess the whole
thing doesn’t especially add up to me. Sorry about that.

In general I save things until the New Yorker opens up,
as you know.

Love as ever,

Don

Editorial note about this letter: The poem Hall comments on is “The Faith Healer,” which McNair sent to him in his previous letter. (Eventually Hall changed his mind and liked the poem.)

Dispensing with the occasional dialect Hall mentions in this letter, McNair decided to keep the rest of “The Faith Healer” as he had it despite Hall’s objections, sending to Wilmot his new draft on 9/25/1983. This became the published version, appearing in Poetry magazine and receiving, together with “The Portuguese Dictionary” and “Remembering Aprons,” Poetry’s Eunice Tietjens prize for 1984. See the final paragraph of Hall’s letter on 10/7/1983, where he questions his criticism of the poem.

Read The Faith Healer (published version)

McNair to Hall: June 13, 1983

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Letter from McNair to Hall, June 13, 1983, Milne Special Collections and Archives, University of New Hampshire

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 June 13, 1983

Dear Don,

Thank you, thank you for your note about the Poetry
acceptances. You’ve made my day.

Your note arrived just as I heard (belatedly)
about your being chosen for the Hale medal.
I am very pleased for you, especially since Frost got
it first. There’s nobody who deserves it more.

The poem Iowa took is “The Longing of the Feet”…
About the definiteness of the CMU connection. All
I can say is that Jerry Costanzo seems serious,
but has himself mentioned that I should
continue sending it elsewhere until September.

So I guess you should continue sending it.

Best to you both–and to Jane–

Wes

 

Hall to McNair: June 9, 1983

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Letter from Hall to McNair, June 9, 1983, Colby College Special Collections

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 9 June 1983

Wesley McNair
Box 43
North Sutton, NH 03260

Dear Wes,

John Frederick Nims is nearly relentless!

I cannot find my notes. Which is the poem
that Iowa took?

Does it seem definite enough with Jerry,
so that I should not send the manuscript out
elsewhere? (I have it back just now.) I am
wondering: suppose somebody else took it, then
would you feel embarrassed about withdrawing
it from Costanzo? A delirious thought of
embarrassment, heaven knows…but I wonder.

Best as ever,

Don

 

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