Colby College

[Click image to view]

Wesley McNair

Dear Wes,

It looks good to me. You left out some
good stuff…but it looks very good to me. Let
us go with this.

Best as ever,

Don

[Click image to view]

Wes McNair

Dear Wes,

Looks good to me. Will do…

Best as ever,

Don

[Click image to view]

Wes McNair
Box 43
North Sutton, NH 03260

Dear Wes,

Good to have your letter, and I am pleased
with the letter from Costanzo. I think that
that publication seems highly likely. The
letter means exactly what it says, and nothing
more…and it could be (one must always remember
it!) that by the time he gets more funding (assum-
ing that he gets it) he will have discovered
several manuscripts which have displaced
The Faces in his affections. It is always possible…
But I don’t think it is ruddy likely, and I think
that there is some security in having this
probability to fall back on – and in the meantime
we keep busy. You and me both.

Love as ever,

Don

[Click image to view]

Dear Wes—

Delighted you find
my cows have made
it!

You & Jane in the
Feb Poetry together,
& you in Atlantic…
all over the place!

Love,

Don

[Click image to view]

Dear Wes,

I know that Costanzo is trying to balance
seventeen balls in the air at once… unable to
take books he wants to take, because of money –
waiting for money, hoping that it will come in so
that he can agree to print books. So I am not at
all sure that he has forgotten…much more likely
that he is temporizing.

Jane is embarrassed that Charlotte must have
put that New Yorker sale in the paper! Funny…

Love as ever,
Don

[Click image to view]

Wes McNair
Box 43
North Sutton, NH 03260

Dear Wes,

I take it that old Costanzo is keeping you waiting?

I’m not sure that the slaughtered animals comes entirely
together now… And I am sure that it is close. I’m not sure
about the title. The verb “find” doesn’t really work much
with the second stanza. I just think it might be called The
Slaughtered Animals… I like the first stanza perfectly.
In the second stanza, you have two very boring verbs – “are”
and “having.” I don’t think you could stand both of them.
What about: “And the great bull/ remain on their knees/ having
lost the idea/ of how to stand.” I’m not sure about the third
line in my version…

Then the sheep seems to me to give more problem. In the
other cases, the sheep cannot find their heads because they
are slaughtered… That is, the lack of heads and the slaughtering
are two sides of each other… Same with the bulls being unable
to stand… That is an immediate sign of their dying. Well,
things that are dead can’t talk either…but that isn’t what
you first think of. Chickens lose their heads, bulls fall to
the ground…sheep stop bleating? It seems more distant, some-
how. And then these – as opposed to the others, that do what
they really do – keep moving. Chickens do indeed keep moving,
after their heads are gone. And they might well be searching
for their heads… But not the sheep. I mean to say, it is
goofy and exciting – but I don’t think it adds up.

We look forward to seeing you later.

Glad you have been reading that writer you mentioned.
Did you see him in last Sunday’s New York Times, book review,
The Making of a Writer?

Yes, the Haines is wonderful. Maybe the Louis Simpson
is the best of all. Have you seen that one?

Love to you both,

Don

[Click image to view]

[Click image to view]

Love,

Don

[Click image to view]

Wes McNair
Box 43
North Sutton, NH 03260

Dear Wes,

I like this one, and I will never like quite so much as
the other recent ones, as your best work – because it is an
anecdote only, because it depends upon a “trick ending,” and
it does not quite survive that… But it is good anyway. It
is just smaller.

And there is one problem with it, as I see it. That is
the meaning of the word “it” at the beginning. It could mean
“veil,” or “apron,” but as it used at the end of the third line,
by the sense of things, it must mean “apron”. But how do you
close an apron around a canning rack? Or close it in the winter
around reluctant lids of jam? In the latter case, maybe you
use it for friction to open the canning lids.

Obviously I am not getting something that you intend.
Obviously I think it is your fault… Maybe not.

The only other thing… I think that “a far-off look” is
pretty trite. Otherwise I like it a lot, and I certainly intend
to pass it onto Joey…but I think maybe you can touch it up a
tiny bit.

Joey is out digging up the sassafras root, so he can’t
speak.

Don