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Letters Between Poets

McNair to Hall: March 11, 1982

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Letter from McNair to Hall, 03-11-1982, Page 1

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 March 11, 1982
Dear Don,

Thanks for your letter. I trust you are now back
home again to enjoy window-views of the snow
that fell while you were away.

I send a poem which I do hope is finished,
but which may not be. Please look it over and
if you find it OK, give it to your right hand,
Joey.

If you find it wanting [even if not], please let me know!

Love,

Wes

Editorial note about this letter: The poem McNair includes is “To My Father,” which appears in the footnote for March 25.

Hall to McNair: March 8, 1982

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Letter from Hall to McNair, 03-08-1982, Page 1

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 8 March 1982

Wes McNair
Box 43
North Sutton, NH 03260

Dear Wes,

Good to have your letter. I am home for four whole
days now. Amazing. Then I am gone for all but thirty-six
hours of the next two weeks. I don’t like that.

I just read at the college of Bruce Guernsey who was
selected last summer as one of the two manuscripts taken by
Pitt – out of more than 1400 submitted. When the figures are
like that, the lottery-likeness is inevitable. But then, so
was the NEA! The good lightning bolts drop out of the blue
just like the bad ones.

Old Costanzo is in funding trouble for his press, as
he told me not in relationship to your manuscript, but just
in general.

Glad you are going to try Solotaroff.

I had forgotten Lisel’s title. I do like a lot of her
work. And I do like Pinsky. I am about to see him again, and
I miss him, now that he has gone out to the west coast. I’m not
sure you are going to like An Explanation very much. It is very
discursive indeed. The opening and closing lyrics are quite
beautiful. He can do it when he wants to.

I will get you that To Keep Moving if you keep reminding
me! It seems silly to go to all the postage when we are nearby.
I would like to think that I will stop by at Colby-Sawyer and
leave it for you…if you are over our way, why don’t you try
driving in the yard.

I am reading a lot of these long and ambitious things on
the road, and some of them are sounding pretty good to me, and
to my listeners. I have hopes.

Best as ever,

Don

 

McNair to Hall: March 1, 1982

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Letter from McNair to Hall, 03-01-1982, Page 1

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 March 1, 1982

Dear Don,

Thanks for your good, long letter.

It’s discouraging to learn about the poetry book club
that failed. But then so much one learns about poetry and its
readership is discouraging! The retreat of the trade houses
from poetry; the government’s retreat from funding small presses,
magazines and individual poets; the competition for places
in the poetry series of a few academic presses–which in
many ways strengthen the walls between the poet and a
general readership. It’s terrible.

Having just gotten word that another of the academic presses
has turned me down for the second time, I am particularly
down about all these things. Over the weekend, Princeton
sent me a form rejection (not the “finalist” letter of last
year) containing its elaborate “no.” Now that I’m in
my fourth year of submitting this manuscript of mine,
I have reason to be troubled. I don’t see how I can make
the thing much better than it is. Yet I feel the old,
annual cycle of rejections starting up once again. Harper
[Written in margin: Solotaroff finally wrote back,
saying he’d “be glad to” look at my book.]
& Row, The National Poetry Series and Pittsburgh are left.
I hope I’m wrong about just one of them, but the hope
at this point is rather thin.
[Written in margin: Forgot Assoc. Writing Programs].

I’m glad to have you as a witness with Costanzo.
I’m also glad that he wants to write about you. You have

2/

written better, larger than most poets of your generation;
you have worked as hard as anyone to establish respect
for the fathers of modern poetry–and awareness of
contemporary poets on each side of the Atlantic. Your sense
of the absolute importance of poetry and the vocation of the poet
has changed many others, I am sure, as deeply as it
has changed me. Together, your books, articles and letters
represent one of the forces keeping literature alive today.
I am glad Costanzo has seen the need for a biography,
and I hope your relationship with him works out.

You ask about The Private Life Lisel Mueller
wrote it. I liked her work in a recent issue of Poetry,
and so I bought that book, her second. Also bought, among
other things, The Situation of Poetry, which I liked very
much, in spite of the academic language. I am sending
now for Pinsky’s An Explanation of America, which I’ve
read about long since and never gotten around to buying.

And I have liked a couple of articles you have
written–the one in the current Poetry, and, especially,
the raking of Lathom (sic) in The Atlantic (the only articles
by you I’ve seen recently). I continue to be interested
in the Hobart & William Smith book, which I’d
gladly purchase if you have an extra copy. If you
don’t, I’ll send for one. (I mentioned this in an earlier
letter and am not sure if you noticed…)

3/

Because I like so much the “long and ambitious things”
of Kicking the Leaves, I look forward to your printing the
long and ambitious things you are now struggling with.
I am sure the wait will be worth it.

In the meantime, good that England went well, and
good that you are both back to re-writing!

Blessings,

Wes

A note from McNair about this letter: Don’s response in the previous letter to my notion of a book club for poetry has dampened my interest in the idea, though the opening of this letter shows my concern, which continues today, about a system that prevents a wide, general readership for poetry….  Later, I refer to Gerald Costanzo, my one glimmer of hope for the publication of my book manuscript, since he invited me to submit my collection in the fall 1982 round at Carnegie Mellon University Press.

Hall to McNair: February 15, 1982

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Letter from Hall to McNair, 02-15-1982, Page 1

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 15 February 1982

Wes McNair
Box 43
North Sutton, NH 03260

Dear Wes,

Good to hear from you, and I’m glad you got Joey’s postcard.
(Basically some place or other I must be Celtic, with all this
dual personality stuff. Next I will be Fiona McLeod.)

I don’t think you are good enough to submit to the New Yorker.
I think you are too good to submit to the New Yorker. With this
most recent issue, full of Howard Moss again, I concocted a
bitchy definition of “disinterestedness”: When a poetry editor
prints great quantities of himself, on the basis of quality
alone, although he realizes that he will be criticized for it…

Good to hear about the writing and re-writing. Me too.
Sometimes I think I carry it a bit too far! You know, I have not
published a satisfactory poem – virtually not a poem – since Kicking.
One little one which will stay as it is – but which I probably will
never reprint in a book because it is too damned little. And
Ploughshares is coming out with one, the Joyce Peseroff issue –
but I am changing it in the meantime. And last week New Republic
came out with one, and I had already changed it, and now I’m changing
it some more – and that little thing is only a few lines long
anyway.

But I am working on long and ambitious things, and maybe
eventually they will not only be publishable but Immortal…
And after all, that is the only thing worth thinking about!

Well, I am both pleased and sorry about the extra teaching,
you will understand. I’m glad it is there if you need it; I am
sorry that you need it, but my goodness the economy is terrible,
and going to get worse. Reagan is worse than Nixon any day. The
worst president we have ever had, and the country is going to be
in the worst shape, quite possibly.

Lately, I have been hearing from Gerry Costanzo – and not
about you. I have written him twice about you, and he has not
mentioned it in reply, and I am going to shut up – because I don’t
want him to get the sense that he is being pushed. However, I don’t
think it all bad that he is being in touch with me, because appar-
ently he wants to write about me – he asked me, and he sounded
serious, if he could be my authorized biographer. Well, I don’t
want one of those! But I think he means it about writing about me.
And I am going down to his place again this spring, to read poems
and give a talk. I am hoping that he will do you, next year,
because I think he does good books, and I think he makes them
attractive. He doesn’t do all good books – nobody does that –
but he has done a couple of good ones lately, and I really think
he’s one of the better small places.

2/

But in the meantime if one of these other things comes
through…I will be delighted of course.

I think that Max Kumin is judging the Princeton things
right now. Dan Hoffman is through.

I saw that you read for the Monday Night. Good for you.

Back in the forties there was a book club for poetry, which
didn’t last very long. I could tell you about it, but it was
doomed. In England, there has been one for years and years and
years, the Poetry Book Society. It comes out of the Arts Council
which is government sponsored. The only way it could happen in
this country is if the Poets and Writers (the Coda people) or the
Academy of American Poets did it. They in a sense have an annual
book, with the Lamont, which they distribute… I think there is
one other book that they annually distribute.

It would be a losing proposition I suppose. The book club
in the forties had five or six members, nation-wide. I was one
of them. Once I met one of the directors, and asked him. Amazing.
But that was a little thing run out of one quarterly magazine…

I seriously think that a national book club would not have
more than two or three hundred members. And everybody would be
quitting all the time, because everybody would get pissed off
about which books were selected.

I’d be all for it anyway of course. But I wouldn’t want
to do it myself.

In a sense, any one person could probably do it, because
it would never get very big. And so if anybody had about $10,000
to lose, I think they could do it, and do it single-handed – maybe
hiring a high school student to stitch up book bags four times a year.
(I suspect it would have to be quarterly rather than monthly.)
Ten thousand dollars would go for ads to start it off, and the
“profits” on the ongoing club would pay for one or two ads or
mailings a year thereafter…but I doubt very much if the initial
ten thousand would ever be earned back.

Want to try it?

Who wrote The Private Life? The title does not ring a bell.
I don’t like Sharon Olds, or not much anyway. I like Linda Gregg –
And I like one or two other people here or there, for that matter!

We had a wonderful time to England. We ate sausages and read
French novels. It was cold, there was a train strike – and it was
lovely. We went to the theater a lot, to the opera once, we looked
at some pictures in museums, some sculpture… We saw Geoffrey Hill.
I saw John Fowles and interviewed him for Esquire. But mostly we
just took it very very easy. And I return here and am delirious
with joy at the old fourteen hour day!

Love as ever, to all of you,

Don

A note from McNair about this letter: The “long and ambitious things” Don says he is working on eventually appeared in his acclaimed collection, The One Day.

McNair to Hall: February 12, 1981 [1982]

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McNair-to-Hall-02-12-1981

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 February 12, 1981 [misdated: should be 1982]

Dear Don,

I heard from Joey that you have chosen three of my poems for
Ploughshares. I’m very glad. I’m also pleased that he thought
“Mina Bell’s Cows” good enough to submit to the New Yorker, even
though it was rejected.

What’s happening here in Sutton is a lot of writing and re-writing.
I thought for sure I’d have two two-page poems for your review
by the end of January, but I put them both away about a week ago,
each about finished. I’m now working on two other poems. Maybe
I’m beginning to work on batches, as you seem to. Anyway, I do
want you to know that I’m struggling each and every day on poems,
and that I’m excited by the writing I’m doing, even though I’m not
yet ready to send samples.

Incidentally, I have been doing some extra teaching—not enough
that it interferes with my writing, but enough to keep food on the table
while I’m on sabbatical. I’m working for the School for Lifelong
Learning, UNH’s continuing education school, which has branches
within commuting distance. Later on, the connection with SLL will
probably help me to put Sean through college, if we’re still here.

My manuscript, famous in its various revisions among
the readers for all the major contests, is now being read once
again by Princeton, The National Poetry Contest, Pittsburgh
and Associated Writing Programs. I have my fingers crossed
for Princeton, the first notification I must face. Rejection—
or acceptance—happens at the end of this month.

2/

Night before last, I read for the Baptist Monday Nights (NL),
mostly older folks, some of whom no doubt expected my poetry to rhyme.
They did like the poems, nevertheless—their engaged and pleased
expressions during the reading were unmistakable. Getting people who
don’t really follow poetry involved in a reading is an especially
gratifying thing for me, since I do feel that poetry should have a
broad appeal.

That makes me think to ask you what is probably a naïve
question. Why isn’t there a book club that features regular selections
of contemporary poetry? Or a book club that features poetry only?
Don’t you think that people would buy contemporary verse if there were
such outlets for it? Probably it’s because I now see the possibility
of publishing a book myself, but I’m currently very down about
how little poetry is read today. I can’t believe the limited number
of readers is only the fault of poets, especially since there’s such
interest in poetry writing in college, and afterward, through workshops
of one kind or another. If individual presses can’t afford to
advertise for their poetry, perhaps a co-operative of some kind
would work—a book club sponsored by the presses, maybe…
I assume others have thought of such things and discarded
their thoughts—but why?

Speaking of books, I’d very much life to get a copy of
your Hobart and William Smith collection of recent essays.
Do you have a copy I could buy? I just bought two very interesting
books—The Private Life and Satan Says. Do you like them, too?
What do you think of Sharon Olds?

Just got word that Diane is leaving for shopping & mail…
so I’ll cut this off here. I hope your trip with Jane to England
went well—and that your return to Eagle Pond Farm has been good, too.

Lots of love to both of you,

Wes

Read Mina Bell’s Cows (published version)

See also a selection of McNair’s manuscript notes and drafts of “Mina Bell’s Cows.”

V. The Writing Rhythm (2/8/1982 – 11/15/1982)

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atlantic-cover-ape
“Mina Bell’s Cows” is published in The Atlantic, 1983.
poetry-covers
Poetry Magazine

My year-long sabbatical leave from Colby Sawyer has been crucial to continuing the momentum started by the NEA fellowship, providing a range of poems in progress together with poems for Joey’s “fall campaign,” as Don has begun to call the process of submitting to magazines. “You are really building up a nice group for Joey,” he writes on September 30. On sabbatical in a period when my two oldest sons have left the nest, I have settled into the luxury of a daily writing schedule, teaching classes at neighboring colleges at night to make ends meet. Going into isolation with my poetry (naming the creation of poems a “vocation” twice in the early letters of this section), I write Don mostly when I am sending work for his critical assessments. I have caught the rhythm of the writing life at last, and I am possessive of it.

That rhythm continues right into the fall of 1982, even though I am teaching a four-course load at Colby-Sawyer and two night courses elsewhere. Outside of this correspondence, I am preparing all of my classes and correcting papers on weekends, just so I can spend a couple of hours each weekday morning writing poems. “Writing is going fine, in spite of all my teaching and other duties!” I write Don on October 31. “I remain on my daily schedule!”

 

mcnair-sutton-002-c
McNair’s farmhouse in North Sutton
Hall-ep-farm
Eagle Pond Farm

In the meantime Don continues with his freelance writing and his poetry readings around the country. Busy as he is, it’s hard to schedule time in the fall of 1982 to discuss the organization of my book manuscript, The Faces of Americans in 1853, at his farmhouse, but I persist. Four years into the submission of my collection (I call it the”Most Famous Little-Known Unpublished Manuscript of Our Times”), I spend more time than ever in these letters fretting over its shape and content.

We meet at last to prepare the book for my own fall campaign.

[This section has 55 letters]

Hall to McNair: December 1, 1981

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Hall-to-McNair-12-01-1981

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 1 December 1981

Wes McNair
North Sutton, NH 03260

Dear Wes,

I love the book in its gross state, and think it is a
great improvement, far more improvement than it ought to be.
I love the feel of it, and really think it makes a quantum
leap. I also like the three new poems, and they are already
gone.

Yes, it was lovely to see you two – and Lily and Wolf also.
And it would be good to see you more often. We are very laggard
this way, both of us inclined to go to bed at about the time we
would be having people over. But when we do see people – I mean
a few people! – we love it.

You are absolutely right about the energy and the vulgarity
of country-western, and this is something wonderful in your work,
and generally it is the best part of your work. Yes, and do not
forget “Drop kick me, Jesus, through the goal-posts of life/ ,
end over end, neither to the left nor the right.”

Iowa was a lot of fun. I saw quite a bit of Don Justice,
whom I admire. Also there was Hank Coulette, and Larry Levis
and Marcia Southwick… And the Justices had a lunch
party for me, and two other people had dinner parties for me,
and somebody else had a big party after the reading. I felt
feted…and I feel even better to be home.

Unfortunately my piece about Kevin McHale seems to be
doomed. Inside Sports is folding. I feel about fifty-two per
cent disappointed, because I had looked forward to writing it;
and forty-eight percent relieved, because I can do something
else instead.

Best as ever,

Don

A note from McNair about this letter: “Wolf and Lily” were local restaurateurs and mutual friends who swelled our dinner company in North Sutton to six….The three poems referred to in this letter are “A Dream of Herman,” “Mina Bell’s Cows,” and “Small Towns are Passing.” So Section IV concludes with one more generous letter from Don, thanking me for a visit; complimenting me about the poetry collection I will once more send out to editors; and  submitting new McNair poems in the guise of Joseph Amaryllis. Less noticeable, but also helpful, is his last paragraph, with its model of cheerfulness in the face of writerly disappointment.

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