I like the content of your poem, The Baseball Players,
very much, and I especially like the form – the way lines
are broken, and (especially) the verbs you’ve chosen.
The poem, through these verbs, is active, yet arrests,
as you intend it to. How few poets today know the potential
of verbs!
Incidentally, my favorite verb in the poem is “established.”
Thanks for sending the photocopy. As it happens, I received
my July issue a couple of days before your letter arrived.
I enclose a poem which I hope you’ll like. Fine
to wait on the other poems. I will send you a retyped
batch, perhaps including this one, and some others, in
mid-September.
Best to you, Joey, Walter Blake Adams, et.al.,
Wes
P.S. Glad to have your positive response to The Name.
P.P.S. Got a call the other day from the Walt Whitman
Poetry Center, asking for a reading in November. The man
said he’d been “following my work,” and especially liked
the poems in the June Poetry.
I handed Joey the cheque, and he immediately telephoned People Express…
He says he will be back in September…
And in fact, I propose saving the good new poem until Howard Moss
is back. I know it has been useless to try him so far…but he will
come around eventually! Summer is actually a very difficult time to
place things. Most every place closes down, and when you send out poems,
they come back with a slip saying that nobody is reading them until October.
Not all places but most.
“The Name” is very nice. I have mild skepticism about “searched,”
as a commonplace, mildly-speaking a dead metaphor. Then I have no others…
I like it a lot.
Here’s the Atlantic poem.
Good luck with Norton. Like all other editors in New York, she
tends to take eight or nine months to get around to replying. How can
they do this! Jane is floating around, at two publishers right now –
then we’ll clear the decks for Alice Quinn at Knopf – who averages eight
or nine months.
Love as ever,
Don
Editorial note about this letter: For more background on the genesis of “The Name,” click here…. The Atlantic poem Hall refers to is “The Baseball Players,” which he published in the magazine.
In the meantime, I trust Joey will find a
way to spend the money you’ve found in here
(re: Poetry sale) – not quite enough for medication,
but more than sufficient for a bean and cole –
slaw dinner in Blackwater Bills’, which is bound
to make medication unnecessary anyway.
I regret I somehow did not receive my July Atlantic (got June late, and then August), since
somebody told me awhile back you have a poem in it.
If it’s handy for you to send a photocopy,
I’d love to see the poem…if not, I’ll see
it when (if) the subscription people respond
to my complaint.
At Kathleen Anderson’s [–NORTON] request, sent what I now
have at the manuscript-to-be. Am trying
to EXPECT NOTHING!
Love,
Wes
Editorial note about this letter: The poem enclosed with this letter is “The Name.” This is the poem as McNair sent it, deciding to keep it this way despite the concerns Hall voices in the following letter:
Read The Name (published version from The Town of No)
A note from McNair about this letter: In my dual reprint, The Town of No & My Brother Running, I changed the poem to the version below, which deletes line 10 (“including his”). I made the change because I found that this line, with which I meant to refer to the woman’s husband, confused readers. Besides, I wanted to emphasize the poem’s main drama, between the woman and her daughter:
Read The Name (published version from The Town of No & My Brother Running)
Sorry about my stupidity. Of course I remember. I
knew I was forgetting something. What I was really for-
getting was to put it down at the time! Davison sent back
the latter two. I will see what I can do. That is, my
friend JA will…
An update on publications // These have been placed
in Three Rivers Poetry Journal: The Before People,
My Brother Inside, The Ministers Death. Thruway
I’m holding onto as inferior, so please don’t send
that one around any more. Killing the Animals,
The Shooting, Seeing Cooch – all are still available-
if Peter Durkin hasn’t taken the latter two-
Did he already see and reject them?
Joey thinks that he has failed, so far, to place
Thruway, The Before People, My Brother Inside…,
The Minister’s Death; as well as Killing the Animals,
The Shooting, and Seeing Cooch…
I will wait until the Ironwood publication of these
poems before submitting to Wallace. You are right
that the poems are not light, though I thought they
might work under the category of “funny” (another
adjective Wallace uses in his ad). True, they’re
not exactly “funny”, either, since the humor is
complicated. Thanks for telling me about the date of
the NH Poet Laureate ritual. Spent the afternoon fitting
the book-to-be together (there are still a few poems to go)
and I’m newly excited about the total design of the thing –
I think it is probably better to wait for Ironwood…
and Light Year tends to be an annual publication, so
probably there would be a chance for Light Year 86. (And
I don’t think they are light anyway, as I mentioned before.)
I don’t think it is worth it, to risk putting people off.
When it comes out in Ironwood, do remind me please.
It was good of you to send that review in the Harvard Advocate. I did see it before because one of
Sean’s friends who attends Harvard brought it over (the
review, not Harvard).
And thanks for reminding me about the Ironwood/Light
Year conflict. Since I don’t know when Light Year goes to
press, maybe all I can do is hope for a publication soon
in Ironwood and forget sending to Wallace for now – unless
you can think of another way-?
