These feeling [sic] simply do not end! Believe me I am
sympathetic with your feelings, but let me tell you that
when you have published a book – which you will – nothing
will happen; or at least it will seem that nothing has
happened. And this would be true whether it were published
by New Rivers or Atheneum. Even if something happens, then
you realize that the “something” is truly nothing. And
after you have published eight books of poems, you are still
convinced that no one has read you, and that probably you
are no good anyway. Or at least you are convinced of that
frequently. I have been going through quite a bad patch,
in my feelings about my own ability, my past work, and cer-
tainly my present work.
There is only one place, or one moment, in which one
finds happiness, and it is always momentary – because that
is the moment of actual writing, and of course that is not
always true.
So I do two things: I assure you that you will publish;
and I tell you that it will not make any difference! But I
do have a third thing to say: it makes a difference to me!
In connection with your own book, I am pursing two
distant notions, neither of which is worth talking about
at the moment.
I wish I could tell you the names of people at Viking,
Doubleday, and Knopf to write to. I don’t think it is
useful to send them a manuscript. You might write a letter,
tell them where you have printed, about the NEA – and ask
them if they would care to see a manuscript. Most publishers
do not read manuscripts that come over the transom any more.
Harper & Row used to, when Fran was there – and now it has
stopped.
I think that the University of Georgia with Zimmer is
a good idea, and why not Illinois, Princeton, and Carnegie-
Mellon?
At the University of Illinois Press, please address
the book to Lawrence Liebermann, and tell him that I asked
you to send it to him. [Written in margin: check spelling!]
I’ll be happy to talk with you about which poems to
send Houghton Mifflin, when the time comes.
2/
If you are happy with the writing that you are doing
now – as you mentioned – you are as happy as a poet can
get!
Fine to see small batches of poems. You won’t hear
much from Joey for the nonce, because summer is a bad time
for submitting things, and a slow time for hearing about
things.
Best as ever, and just keep to the bench, as the
scientists say,
Many thanks for your good long letter about the poems.
I’m delighted that you like the “6 October…” I sent these
out to a good number of people, and I guess that most of
the people whose opinion I respect like this one best. It
goes over big at poetry readings! (Believe me, I do say
that with the sense of the ghoulish…) And Robert Bly thinks
it is probably one of the worst ones ever written, etc. I
sort of knew he would. He is crazy about anything connected
with my father… I mean sort of insane. Still, you have to
wonder… I am really glad that you like it.
I take most seriously your suggestions about revision
And will keep them with the poems to keep looking at your
Suggestions. I know that the Chickens poem will change.
I am not quite sure what seems unrealized in “The
Glass” now. You wanted me to break the first stanza into
two parts, but you did not make any other suggestions. Can
you make any further suggestions about this one? I really
think that your suggestions about Tending Fire are going to
save that poem, which I have felt slipping away from me…
That is, a lot of people have felt that the end of it was
too domestic or comfortable – and I couldn’t quite see that –
but now I see why it is, as I believe anyway – because of
the first three lines.
And I think you are really helping with remaking the
Whip-Poor-Will also – which needs it!
I will show you some more in time – and of course I
will show you these again when I straighten them out or
attempt to.
Thanks for your note, though I’m sorry to hear the dis-
couraging news. It is simply a bad time for publishing a
book. And it may be a bad time forever, with the big publishers
in New York and Boston. I think I told you that my first book
was rejected thirteen times before it was accepted – and that
was a time when publishers were almost looking for new poets,
at least compared to now. Fran’s firing was a real blow to me,
to my optimism about things. I will keep looking and keep
thinking. When I see Jon Galassi – who is the editor at
Houghton Mifflin, but who has an assistant who reads most of
the poems that come in – I will approach him cautiously, and
that might be worth trying again. But any one possibility is
always an improbability. Meanwhile, we will get the poems into
some good magazines, and in the long run I think that will go.
Have a terrific time at Detroit. I spent seventeen years
only forty miles away. And there is a good art museum and a
good ballpark, and otherwise it is a pretty depressing and
depressed place.
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!
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.
I take it that this is not only not
been printed anywhere, but also not been sent
anywhere, not even to the New Yorker? I do
want to try the New Yorker with it. Two
words on a postcard: “Not sent.” And off it
goes.
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.
Could you send me a copy of “The Thin Man”? It has
not returned, and it is possible that it will not.
And for that matter, why don’t we go back to working
with Joey again. I am over my heat, and it is obvious
that this Bad Accident will never come near either one of
us again. Let us just start in. But when you send me
back the poems – for sending out – would you please tell
me again where they have been? That is, would you repeat
my information to you? I buried all the old records in
my correspondence box, which is now anonymous among rows
of boxes up in the Dark Hole upstairs. So I need to know
where they have been, and I would not necessarily remember.
I hope that by the time the two poems come out in Poetry you will really be able to feel good about them.
Yes, the Caldecott was good news. So many great ideas,
when you are free-lance writing, fall apart and bring in no
mortgage-helpers. But then something like this happens, and
it is a little annuity for several years. Believe me, I did
not think of the writing only in terms of money! …but I guess
I think of the Caldecott mostly in terms of money!
Thank you for writing as you did. I am sorry to be
the source, or the effective cause, of such unhappiness.
This too will pass, and in the meantime – as you say so
eloquently – something has happened to be learned from.
Although Joey did not do terribly well for you, certain
things may be opening up. No sign of interest from New Yorker,
but I think that things are quite chaotic there right now, and
I would not be too discouraged about it. When you write new
things, I think you ought to try them there. Hayden
Carruth has shown an interest in your work, and I think you
ought to try again. When you write him with new poems, do
remind him that I showed him some earlier – because I did
it in my own person.
However, do be terribly careful, please, not ever to
mention the connection between Joey and me.
[Written in margin: to anyone.] It would be a
matter of great embarrassment to me if any of these poetry
editors, some of whom I know under my own name!, realized
that I was corresponding with them under another.
As I sent out the poems, many magazines took forever
to answer. (One of them was Poetry, by the way, with the
first batch; and then they did take two later. So these long
delays were perhaps not all a waste of time.) But the minute
they came back, I sent them out again the same day. So the
notion that nine months meant that you should not take seriously
the possibility that you might be published…well, obviously
I think that was a very strange thought. Or it was a strange
thought that you would then feel free to publish them elsewhere
without letting me know, while I was still madly sending them
out…
But I need not repeat myself, I realize! Your remorse
is bad enough, and there’s no point in rehearsing things.
I take it that the two poems which Poetry ^has taken have not been
published elsewhere. …I do know that your publication of
“The Thin Man” in the Concord Monitor was only naïve. …The
thing to remember is that publishing is publishing, period.
That there is nothing which is tantamount to this or tantamount
to that. All they are interested in is whether something has
2/
been published or not.
Now for that matter, I merely generalize. If you
send “The Thin Man” out again, to other magazines, I suggest
that you always tell the editor that it appeared in a news-
paper interview in a newspaper called the Concord Monitor
with a circulation of blah blah blah. Somebody may take it
anyway. Certainly some small magazine, with a small circulation,
would feel free to take it. Or quite possibly the Boston
Monthly might feel free to take it. I merely mean that if
the New Yorker had taken it, where it was sitting while it
appeared in the Concord Monitor, the New Yorker would def-
initely have gone back on its acceptance. And that most of
the self-respecting quarterlies and monthlies – Atlantic,
Poetry, etc. – would not take it after it appeared in the
Concord Monitor, if they knew about it.
For that matter, the Harvard Magazine would take it.
And just to prove to you that my regard and high wishes
for your work continues intact, may I please have The Thin Man
for the Harvard Magazine, when it comes back from the Virginia
Quarterly? I do not mind reprinting from the Concord Monitor.
Wes McNair
Dept. of English
Colby-Sawyer College
New London, NH 03257
Dear Wes,
Thanks for the mini-poem. It is an absolutely magnificent
idea, it will be a marvelous poem – and I don’t think it is
quite yet finished. I think that there is a certain awkwardness,
and haste, perhaps, about the end of the poem. I don’t think
we should have a comma after “now.” I think that “the guilt
about their weight,” seems awkward in its little words. And
I know that “fade like a dream,” is the most total of cliches.
And things get a little clichetic further on. “Steaming with
food,” and “appetizing,” and is “seen” the right word? I like
the third line from the end. I like the second line from the
end pretty well – I think the last line is OK but I think it
could be a whole lot better. I wish you would keep it around
a little longer, the way you tend to do anyway, and intensify
or freshen the last half or third of the poem. It is a marvelous
notion! Dear to my heart!
Fine for removing those three poems from circulation – after they come back from the places where they are currently
being read. Besure that Howard Dinin waits for Joey’s release.
It would be embarrassing – for you, for Amaryllis, Inc. – if
these poems were taken by another magazine, and then Joey had
to say that they were not available. Be certain about this,
please.
I had a good letter from Howard Dinin, and I will be in
touch with him shortly.
We had a lovely time with you, also, and loved the photographs.
I’m glad that you are enjoying String. Did you see that
my children’s book took the Caldecott? We will be able to
build the new bathroom!
Love to you both,
Editorial note about this poem:Though McNair does not send Hall a completed version of his “mini-poem” until 3/29/1980, his final revisions at that time reflect Hall’s concerns.
