Hall to McNair: November 15, 1982
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15 Nov. 1982
Wes McNair Dear Wes, Well, I love it, which means that Joey is Best as ever, Don |
Letters Between Poets
McNair to Hall: November 6, 1982
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November 6, 1982
Dear Don– Since it is 11:50 AM, I must If you think it’s ready, please Many thanks for the advice! Love, Wes |
Editorial note about this letter: The revision referred to is “The Minister’s Death,” sent on this date as it was published.
Read The Minister’s Death (published version)
Hall to McNair: November 3, 1982
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3 November 1982
Wes McNair Dear Wes, I think this is extremely beautiful, possibly even one It is another one like “cupping” and “darting” which is Anyway, could you find something else for that? And there The only other thing I have any doubt about at all is the But what I started out with is the real thing. This is Love as ever, Don |
VI. A Book at Last (12/3/1982 – 12/29/1983)
Among letters about mutual visits, hopes for a teaching position, new publications in magazines, and continuing adjustments of The Faces of Americans in 1853, is the most important news of this section: the acceptance of my book in August by the University of Missouri Press as the 1983 Devins Award winner, chosen by David Wagoner, who published my first poem in Poetry Northwest years before. I phoned Don immediately to give him the news, and I still remember his reply. “Wes,” he said, “I could kiss you.” As I say in my essay about our early correspondence (in Mapping the Heart), “I could have kissed him, too. I could have kissed the first ten people I saw.”
I also notified Jerry Costanzo, editor of Carnegie Mellon University Press, who had written me a generous letter on February 1 about being unable to accept The Faces of Americans and his hopes of accepting it in the fall. In his response to my later news that the book had been taken by the University of Missouri, Costanzo offers the possibility of publishing my second book with him – though Don has already gotten “guarded interest” in my next book from David Godine.
In August of 1983 Don has his own literary successes. His play, Ragged Mountain Elegies, is produced for the second time in Peterborough, New Hampshire. And he receives the Sarah Josepha Hale Medal for literary distinction at the Opera House in Newport, though I am unable to be in his audience, busy with summer teaching to pay for my son Sean’s first college year. Unfortunately, August is also the month of a setback for Jane that lasts throughout the fall: vertigo, resulting from an ear infection.
But Jane soldiers on, as does Don, even though he has deeply mixed emotions about the play he has written, feeling both high and low about it. “We must fear depression,” he writes on September 16, “[and] we must fear elation…There is no ending this unless we stop being poets and writers.” At another time, I might find wisdom in these words. But what I feel, looking forward to the publication of my first book and my Devins Award reading in Columbia, Missouri, is elation, without qualification.
[This section has 75 letters]
McNair to Hall: October 31, 1982
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October 31, 1982
Dear Don, I hope you and Joey like the enclosed. If If there are reservations, I will just wait Writing is ‘going fine’ in spite of all Love, Wes |
Editorial note about this letter: The unnamed poem referred to is “The Minister’s Death.”
Here is the text of “The Minister’s Death” as sent to Hall:
That long fall,
when the voices stopped
in the tweed mouth
of his radio, and sermons
stood behind the door
of his study in files
no one would ever again inspect,
and even the black shoes
and vestments, emptied of him,
were closed away,
they sat together Sundays
in the house, now hers —
the son wearing his suit
and water-combed hair,
and mother in a house dress,
cradling the dead
man’s cane. Somewhere
at the edge of the new
feeling just beginning
between them, floorlamps
bloomed triple bulbs
and windowsills sagged
with African violets,
and the old woman,
not knowing exactly how
to say his face looked lovely
in the chair, framed
by a white aura
of doily, said nothing
at all. And the son,
not used to feeling
small inside the great
shoulderpads of his suit,
looked down at the rugs
on rugs to where the trees kept
scattering the same, soft
puzzle of sunlight
until, from time to time,
she found the words
of an old dialogue they both
could speak:”How has the weather
been this week? What time
did you start out from Keene?”
Hall to McNair: October 14, 1982
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14 Oct. 1982
Wes McNair Dear Wes, I like the new title. It is not that I care Love, Don |
McNair to Hall: October 13, 1982
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October 13, 1982
Dear Don, “Retreats” was meant as a word about the Thus, the enclosed. I do like the title better! If you have any doubts about the grammar It’s off to school! I’m very glad Love, Wes |
Editorial note about this letter: The enclosed poem is “After the Ice,” in its published version.
Read After the Ice, as published.
Hall to McNair: October 11, 1982
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11 October 1982
Wesley McNair Dear Wes, I don’t have a current price list for the American I love the poems, and am starting to send them out. I have one suggestion – the title of “The Ice Retreats Refresh my memory – so I can pass it on down street to Stay tuned for the latest bulletins. But don’t stay up. Best as ever, Don |
McNair to Hall: October 6, 1982
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October 6, 1982
Dear Don, Diane bought me this, and while I’m glad to have Your notes about poems, sent so quickly after If you like the enclosed–or any part of By the way, I did send the book to Costanzo– The attached check is for Ploughshares poems, 2/ which earned $25. Fall is lovely here–the trees beautiful, I think of your fall, pleasantly Love to you and Jane, Wes |
A note from McNair about this letter: The enclosed poem is “When Paul Flew Away.” “Blue Ghost” on page two of this letter is a reference to Don’s short lyric, “Mount Kearsarge.”
Read Mount Kearsarge (published version)
Hall to McNair: October 4, 1982
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4 October 1982
Wes McNair Dear Wes, I think that the notion of the farm’s But yes, a century confuses things, Love as ever, P.S. Wes: You have sent the manuscript to Don |