Hall to McNair: November 7, 1980
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7 November 1980
Wes McNair Dear Wes, Good news from John Nims. I think that his I am keeping “The Fat Enter Heaven” here, Actually, he has a couple of other newer Best as ever, Don |
Letters Between Poets
Hall to McNair: October 31, 1980
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October 31, 1980
Dear Mr. Amaryllis, Thank you for letting us see Mr. McNair’s I like, and would like to accept, two of My reason is that “tampons” right now has too I return the other poem just to save paperwork. With all best wishes, Sincerely, |
Read Hair on Television (published version)
Read The Fat Enter Heaven (published version)
Hall to McNair: October 30, 1980
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30 October 1980
Wes McNair Dear Wes, Many thanks for your letter, and I am I like the first version of the father/ I have been going back to the new father Best as ever, Don |
McNair to Hall: October 28, 1980
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October 28, 1980 Dear Don, Wanted you to know your reading of “To a It’s that ironic speaker – ironic accuser, I By the way and for what it’s worth, I still It was good to see you, even if briefly. Love, Wes |
Read To a Waterfowl (published version)
Hall to McNair: October 27, 1980
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27 October 1980
Wesley McNair Dear Wes, I will see you before I mail this – but I’ll be Please realize that the main problem is that jobs I fear for Colby-Sawyer also. And I admire the place, The payscale also I realize. though the other thing is Therefore if I were you and I were offered a decent |
A note from McNair about this letter: The “Muller” referred to here is Nick Muller, then the president of Colby-Sawyer College. Though the College had fallen on hard times in this period of its history, it eventually bounced back and is now thriving.
McNair to Hall: October 22, 1980
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October 22, 1980 Dear Don, How do you like my new note paper? I’m not sure You were good to take the time to warn me about the You may be right in questioning my move from Of course, those “sub-literate” girls do get me 2/ and development of the American Studies program. [Written in margin: But this seems ungrateful as I reread Yet I am torn. I have a sabbatical coming up Since receiving your letter, I have decided to try for It could always happen that after all my efforts, I was happy to learn of the reading you and 3/ (I’ve never heard her before) and to hear some of her But these may not fit your format for the evening, Anyway, Diane and I are glad to be beginning Love, Wes P.S. Wanted to tell you that I will not be sending the P.P.S. I was delighted with your prediction about Davison. |
A note from McNair about this letter: The reading I refer to was given for guests at the home of the English department chair at Colby-Sawyer College, Carl Cochran. My teasing about Don’s “flugling,” etc. plays off his own comic description of preparations for his reading three years before….. The “fat” poem mentioned in the postscript is “The Fat People of the Old Days,” discussed with Don in Section III of our correspondence and still underway.
Read Flies (published version)
Read The Repeated Shapes (published version)
Hall to McNair: October 17, 1980
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17 October 1980
Wesley McNair Dear Wes, Good to hear from you. I fully understand your wish Still, I have a number of observations. I suspect that Second, it is well known that it is virtually impossible And then, because there are so many small presses and There are also good people, with books, with M.F.A.’s, Third, or fourth or whatever it is…do try, if you are 2/ [X] I was at Arizona State last autumn and I think it is I am being discouraging! I don’t want you to expect That is nice news about the Magazine Verse book. Jane I have learned to ask: does the ink-manufacturer donate There will be more poems in more places before very Oh my goodness, the foliage is fantastic. Love as ever, Don |
Editorial note about this letter: Included with this letter is Hall’s letter of recommendation for McNair’s job search, accompanied by other letters written by professors from Bread Loaf, and from Dartmouth College, where McNair took courses in American literature, history and art during 1971-72, sponsored by a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
See the letter of recommendation Hall wrote for McNair here.
McNair to Hall: October 11, 1980
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October 11, 1980
Dear Don, Well, I was hoping the poem was better than you appear to think. I write to ask for still another favor. Would you be willing The reason I need the recommendation is that I want to leave I would not be asking for the recommendation at all if I were I do know how painful recommendation-writing can be. If it is too The jobs I’m interested in right now, by the way, come from the Incidentally, I did get a bit of good news the other day. Alan 2/ wrote to ask me for permission to reprint “The Bald Spot” in the 1981 Thanks again for your comments on my poem. I hope you are enjoying Love, Wes P.S.—I enclose an addressed, stamped envelope for your convenience. |
Editorial note about this letter: The poem referred to in the first paragraph is “Waving Goodbye,” which Hall assesses in his final letter of Section III.
Read Waving Goodbye (published version)
See also a selection of McNair’s manuscript notes and drafts for “Waving Goodbye.”
IV. “For the first time…I can call myself a poet.” (10/11/1980 – 12/1/1981)
A central narrative in this section of the letters is my growing sense of myself as a poet. Returning to Colby-Sawyer College from my NEA fellowship to teach in the fall, I am committed to organizing my life around poetry. So I write to Don in the first letter of this section about applying for a new college position as a poet, against the odds of obtaining one. (“I plan finally to adjust my teaching assignment to my real self, kept secret for so long!”) Shortly afterward, I report my decision to resign as coordinator of the American studies program I founded, and my intention to apply for a full-year sabbatical in the ensuing year in case my job search doesn’t pan out. My NEA grant has allowed me to create enough poems for part of a second book, I tell Don on December 5, 1980, and I want to continue the momentum. “For the first time in my life,” I write, “I can call myself a poet, without misgivings.”
Yet events conspire to limit my output of poems. A mid-life crisis, brought on by the death of Diane’s father, family struggles, and an up-welling of regrets — leaves me “crying a lot,” as I tell Don on January 17, reluctant to spend time with poetry and its reminders of my “inner life.” By opening up my emotional life in this period, poetry has itself no doubt contributed to my situation.
One exception to my inactivity as a poet in early 1981 is the poem I write for Diane in sympathy for her grief , “A Dream of Herman.” Fussing over its final line with Don occupies a series of our early letters in the section. Otherwise, I try to hold myself together, using my spare time to teach in the night school at a nearby business college so I can pay some bills and send Diane to a summer session in pottery at the Haystack School in Maine. In one letter, I toy with the idea of writing a textbook for a new source of income.
In May, however, spurred on by acceptances by both Poetry magazine and The Atlantic, I tell Don I’m ready to start writing once more. And I do, sporadically, though my personal struggles continue. They include Diane’s two back operations that have resulted from her work in the state liquor store and prevent her from attending Haystack. All summer, our lost summer, she must recuperate, and I must serve as a house-husband, summer-school teacher, and occasional assistant for carpenters renovating our house. Dealing with such troubles and distractions, I send only three letters to Don in the summer of 1981, one of them composed in September.
Don’s correspondence in this section, like mine, is more personal than it has been before. It tells of his own sorrows – his son’s car accident, the dire health and eventual death of Jane’s father in Michigan, and Jane’s difficulties with depression. But by the fall of 1981 Diane is on the mend, and though Don is often on the road with an author tour and visits with Jane to Michigan, the two of us are back to active discussions about poems in progress and the revision of my still unpublished book, which the editor of Carnegie Mellon University Press has invited me to submit during his 1982 round of submissions. My year-long sabbatical, with its promise of new poems, has begun.
[This section has 60 letters]
Hall to McNair: October 6, 1980
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6 October 1980
Wes McNair Dear Wes, I don’t think I like it quite so much. Something willful So I am fairly negative, I suppose – yet I should say: Joey keeps busy, but editors are slow as molasses. Love as ever, Don |
A note from McNair about this letter: I quickly abandoned “Waving Goodbye,” the poem in question here, but it returned many years later, less abstract in its conception, fastened down by human experience. The final version of “Waving Goodbye, published in my 1998 collection Talking in the Dark, appears below. Sometimes the creative cycle a poem requires is long, and “Waving Goodbye” took nearly as long as “The Retarded Children Play Baseball” to think through. So this section of letters ends with a kind of promise to my future development as a poet.
Read Waving Goodbye (published version)
See also a selection of McNair’s manuscript notes and drafts for “Waving Goodbye.”