Here is a book by Jenny, which includes reference to earlier
books, and a famous anthologized poem. I know that I have been in
anthology with her and that poem, and I cannot find it. Maybe – doubltess [sic] –
it is somewhere in the Colby-Sawyer library. But then, it is somewhere
in my library too, and I cannot find it. Jenny is a bit younger than I
am, and has done a lot of BBC stuff and journalism of one sort and
another, as well as the books of poems which are of course what she takes
most seriously.
As far as I can tell, there would only be two possible days,
the 27th or the 28th of September. She is visiting with her daughter,
and has a lot of things planned ahead of course, and I don’t think
that she could stay around or come back.
Let me know just as soon as you can, please.
Well, I am delighted about Fran’s initial response also, and I know that I must not be “not too hopeful” and I hope to heaven you
know it also. Chances are, as ever, that we will not get what we both
want. But I hope that we do!
Don’t be disturbed about me feeling that things do not work. I
cannot remember ever having been wholly satisfied with anything by
anybody I know. [Written in margin: Or by me.]
I don’t feel more comfortable about that image with the o’s,
because I don’t know where the telephone linesman came from. I think
they have to be in there, cutting and making this unnatural, artificial,
man-made o. I was trying to imagine a natural one, which is what I felt
you had me imagining.
I don’t know whether the line would stress the car more than the
driving…I wasn’t particularly happy about the line that I suggested.
But I felt the lack of the bone, with the verb missing. I don’t think
that an incomplete sentence is really unusual syntax exactly. It didn’t
bother me as being peculiar or unusual or eccentric. It bothered me
as seeming somehow incomplete – I mean not just incomplete in the way
that it literally was. As lacking some essential organism to make it
thoroughly alive and vigorous.
I look forward to the two longish poems, heaven knows, and everything
else. Also to read the new order. I suspect that I will like it.
But it is hard for me to know without actually reading through it again
In the new way.
I told Joey and he says cool.
Love as ever,
Don
Editorial note about this letter: McNair is mistaken about having sent “The Thin Man” earlier and finally includes it with his next letter, on September 12. “Hair on Television” doesn’t reach Hall until McNair sends it on September 19. A note from McNair about this letter: Don asked for the fair copies of the new poems by telephone, telling me at that time about Bly’s poem on the subject of hair.
Needless to say, I am pleased, delighted in fact, that Fran
McCullough likes my manuscript. I will do my best to be “not too hopeful,”
as you suggest, and I send renewed thanks for your persistence in this thing.
Your confidence in my poetry gives me more strength than you realize,
as I forge ahead through revision after revision.
And of course I am glad you like the two poems—disturbed, too,
about what you feel does not work in each. How do the trees grow o’s, you
ask. I meant to refer in that image to the o’s which telephone linesmen
often cut around telephone wires. Please let me know whether my explanation
makes you feel more comfortable with the image. You have me worried…
Perhaps you are right about the verbless-ness of “Driving Poem.” I
guess I was hoping that the verbs in the which clause would carry the
poem well enough, in spite of the unusual syntax. About your suggestion,
“This is the room…”: Do you think the line would stress the car more
than the driving which the title refers?
I am working hard on two longish poems called “The Thin Man” and
“Hair on Television,” both of which I would like to put into the revised
book. They would go into section one, along with “For My Father” and
“The Bald Spot,” so that the section would give a sort of overview of
the personal and some of the public concerns of the book’s narrator.
Section two would begin with “Old Trees” and would move to the other
regional poems of the present section one—i.e., “Fire in Enfield,”
“Leaving the Country House” and “Memory of Kuhre.” Each of those poems
contains a certain play of present and past—especially the latter—and
so they would lead logically to section three, which would include all
of the poems in the present sections two and three except for the “dirty
poems.” “Driving Poem” would fall just before “Country People,” the other
drivin g [sic] poem of the collection, in section five. The sections woud be
called “The Thin Man”(1); “Memory of Kuhre”(2); “Going Back to Fifth Grade”(3);
“The Faces of … (4); and “Country People”(5).
I hope you find that my revision strengthens the book, and I hope to
be able to show it to you before long. Thanks, as usual, for all of
your help and advice.
Love to both you & Jane,
Wes
P.S.: Please explain to Joey that I will be sending him
poems as soon as they are ready –
No, I have not seen work by Jenny Josephs,
but if you say she’s good, we are interested in
having her in September. Since readings by women
are often co-sponsored by the Women’s Studies
program here, I should have some bio material on
Ms. Josephs to pass around – and to use later
for publicity. It would be nice to have a poem or
two by her also.
I will have to check with others before I can
say “yes” absolutely. But a reading in September
does at this point seem quite likely.
Thanks for the suggestion – and please send
bio stuff as soon as possible –
Good to have your letter. These are good poems. I have a couple
of questions. I guess I cannot quite see how they grow o’s. I can
see them growing over or under. I guess I can see one branch going over,
and another under, which do not touch but visually cross each other…
but an o seems too symmetrical, possibly? I love the cadence and
feeling of this poem, and then I am a bit disturbed by finding it
visually not exactly perceptible.
Again, I like the language of Driving Poem very very much – but
I am troubled by the syntax, wanting it to be a sentence and finding
no way to turn it into a sentence. Do I take it that the “room” is
the driver’s seat of the car? Or perhaps more accurately the car itself?
I might wonder about having a first line like: “This is the room…”
Joey would always like to have more poems to send out, if you
feel like it letting him.
I do have considerable hope that you will find your GM – or that
some decent GM will find you. And in fact, I have good hope for Harper
and Row. It does not mean any more than it says, but it is a fact
that Fran McCullough likes the manuscript very much. She wants to look
at it some more, and confirm herself in her feelings – and I don’t think
this is a sinister doubt. But the problem is elsewhere. It takes her
a long time, and a good deal of effort, to get a book of poems accepted
by the powers that be. The poetry-schedule is full up for a while.
She cannot even bring the subject up, to the powers that be, for a while.
And when she does, if she does decide to push your book as I hope and
mostly believe she will, the powers that be may not take to it,
or may feel that they cannot take on another books of poems at that time.
Therefore, you are to be pleased that she likes her work, you are to be
hopeful but not too hopeful, and you are to sit tight! OK?
None of which should deter you from going right ahead with revising
your manuscript and so forth. About the “dirty” poems, I too feel
ambivalent. I am not sure that they belong there – but I am not certain
that they don’t, either. Make your decision against them this time.
Be prepared, possibly for some argument on another occasion.
It has suddenly occurred to me that I never answered your
good letter about my book and where it might be published. This
lapse does not indicate my indifference – far from it. In fact,
I have taken your words so seriously, making them part
of a conversation with myself, that I’ve forgotten to communicate
with you about my responses.
In brief, then: While I would probably consider publishing
a second book of poetry – perhaps a second, smaller collection –
with a small press, I would rather place my first book
with a “name brand” publisher – a “GM,” to quote you.
It’s that I’ve spent years putting this collection together,
and I’d like to make the biggest splash possible with it.
In the event that I can’t find my GM, I’ll try the other
alternatives. And thanks, by the way, for putting the case
for publishing with the small press so clearly before me.
I’ve been working on a handful of poems – some of which
will appear in the revised^ as per your suggestion manuscript of my book. I
enclose two of the poems for the revised manuscript. I will
send others as they are finished. I’m pulling the two
“dirty poems” out of the book – they seem to break
2/
the tone of that section and the book as a whole – and I’m
changing certain sub-groupings and sub-headings.
You will be the first to see the final product. I write
so much and so little that I frustrate myself, and
everyone else, I fear. Still, I hope to have the new book
for you soon.
In the meantime, thanks for all of your encouragement.
I would be lost without it.
All the best to you and Jane,
Wes
DRIVING POEM
In the room
which makes trees go by
and grass run
along the edge of the slow
field and farmhouses turn
small and far away
revealing one
by one their windows
Thank you for that good letter. If I have been a help, I am
delighted. And I don’t mean to be false
[Written in margin: ly modest]
about it: I have been a help!
But I am delighted to have been, and want to continue to be.
I like that cartoon. But I don’t think that your situation
is quite so desperate!
I think your saturation-bombing approach is excellent. And I
would indeed submit to all of these places. Including the Walt Whitman.
The University of Illinois is getting its books around. Princeton
does a very good job. Carnegie-Mellon makes very attractive books,
and mails them to people. I don’t think it would be a bad deal.
Heaven knows, Houghton Mifflin would be the best deal. And I will
mention things to Jon Galassi. But that means little. They will get
at least a thousand manuscripts.
So will most of the places. Which always makes it a lottery.
I have been doing some more thinking about small presses, not
with you in mind, but just in general. That phrase covers so many
different things. I would not publish with Ithaca House. I’m not sure,
really, that I would publish with New Rivers – but more likely. I would
publish with Sheep Meadow. Or with Alice James… First of all, I
would publish with Greywolf. Do you know of that? They publish Tess
Gallagher, and do lovely books. “They” is a young man named Scott Walker,
whom I met at the NBA thing about small presses, where Jane read her
poems. A terrific, energetic young man – who makes his living by
publishing poetry! Obviously, the secret ingredient in such a “living”
is, as Pound would put it, low overhead. But he does, doing everything
himself – editing, designing, overseeing the printing, distributions,
sales, wrapping packages…
I liked him enormously, his vigor and intelligence. He does not
think of himself as some sort of bush league. He just wrote me a letter,
saying – freshly, cockily – that if established poets really liked small
presses, how come they never made small presses their major publishers?
I think I was being solicited, but I am not certain.
I told him that I was very fond of Fran McCullough, and would stay
with her out of loyalty – something which I think will shock him; I think
that will sound to him like being loyal to General Motors. But he is not
prepared to be some sort of farm system. He wants to be the continuing
publisher of terrific poets who never leave his stable. Tess Gallagher
has had opportunities to go elsewhere, but she will stay with him.
[Written in margin: So far, anyway.]
Distribution for small presses is getting better and better. It is
probably not quite so good as big presses, but in many ways it is less
frustrating. The thing about a small press, when it is expertly run like
2/
this one, and a few others, is that the author benefits from the
absolute, total, undivided attention and commitment of the publisher.
I cannot say that for Harper & Row! Fran McCullough cares, but she
does not handle marketing, distribution, remaindering, advertising,
promotion, and wrapping packages, the way Scott Walker does.
All I am doing – with you, and I will do the same thing with
a few other people – is to recommend re-thinking the notion of
the big publishers and the little ones.
I would be lost without you. Ever since
your generous recommendation that I be
invited to read at read at Marietta College, you
have sustained me as a writer. Your
advice, your bolstering of my confidence,
have quite literally kept me going.
These things are being written,
I’m convinced, somewhere in heaven.
Do you remember the cartoon of
the two doomed men, deep in the
dungeon, manacled to the wall by
hands and feet, a small window
far above their heads, one turning
to the other, saying, “Now here’s
my plan”? Now here’s my plan.
I have consulted my Coda Awards
List booklet and have found that
there are fully five publishers who invite
manuscripts in the fall. They are: Houghton
Mifflin, Wesleyan, U. Illinois, Princeton,
Carnegie Mellon. In addition, there is the
Walt Whitman Award Competition, ending
with the publication of the winning book
I have decided to mail my book to the five
publishers (or most of them) and to the
Walt Whitman Award Competition, and
to cover myself with telegrams in the
event of success with one of the above.
By the fall, I will have improved my
manuscript (as you suggest) in any
way possible.
What do you think? Specifically, what
do you think of the inclusion of U.
Illinois, Princeton and Carnegie Mellon
(esp. the last)? Would the book get enough
play if I were favored with acceptance
at any of these places?
Un million de gracias, as the Chileans
say, for all your help. You save my life.
Well, it’s damned discouraging. You are good!
Eventually, more than 4 or 5 of us will get the
message. Many good people have been slow to
get published – Frost & Muir for two. Harper
& Row is unbearably slow. Of course the letter
from Ochester is hardly a bad sign – but one
needs more than good signs. I was quick off
the study block, an ambitious & precocious
child – but my first book was rejected 13
times before acceptance. Jane is going through a
patch of getting everything rejected from mags,
having been lucky earlier. She’s discouraged
too. I cannot remember if you have ever tried
Wesleyan. Are you at all interested in a small
press? I just had a pamphlet with BOA.
2/
You might try Galassi (Jonathan) at Houghton
Mifflin in the autumn, saying to J.G. that I
asked you to try him. Publishers don’t
generally accept anything – but some will &
do.
No reputable agent is
useful to a point. I can explain, if this is
obscure. I do use agents – but not for poems.
The writing – I don’t need to tell you – is
what matters. Keep getting better, & improve
the mss. every time it comes back, & you
will win through. As Jane & I always
quote to each other, from “Mary Hartman,”
: “Trust me! Trust me!”
Just got a rejection from U/Pittsburg Press.
My note (handwritten by Ed Ochester!) speaks
of “fine work here” and goes on to say that
“we have decided to go with other manuscripts,”
and that I should try the Press “again next
year if [my] book hasn’t been placed by then.”
The note brings back memories of another,
similar, rejection, sent me some months ago
by New Rivers Press, to whom I had mailed my
chapbook.
Since I figure I’m due soon for a
rejection from Yale, I’m writing to ask you
if you can think of any other publisher to whom
I might send the book. Do publishers generally
accept unsolicited manuscripts from poets?
I’m told there’s a NY agent named
Scott Meredith who is fairly reputable and
handles the work of many poets as well as
fiction writers. Do you know about this guy?
In my desperation, I’m up for any
suggestions – am beginning to fear that my
2/
“gratification” may be “delayed” forever.
Writing has been going well (up to today,
at least) and has been going steady and strong
for some time, thanks to your good influence.
I hope all is well with your writing – and with
Jane’s, in spite of her dismay on the night
we were at your house.
Down
Wes
A note from McNair about this letter: Jane’s “dismay” refers to the episode of depression that afflicted her during our visit.
J.A. Amaryllis Incorporated
Box 71
Potter Place
New Hampshire 03265
Dear J.A.:
What an attractive letterhead you have chosen for your new
agency. And the color of the typeface, plant green, is just the right
thing.
I am of course flattered that Amaryllis Incorporated would
think of representing me as my literary agent. I hope that my poems
will contribute to the diversification which you say will increase
your credibility. Have you considered, by the way, the possibility
of a motto in those words? Credibility through diversification. I
see it as a logo, rising somewhat toward the viewer out of an
amaryllis bulb.
Anyway, about the poems. The ones that are as yet unpublished
are: The Bald Spot; Holding the Goat; When Superman Died in Springfield,
Vermont; Going Back to Elinore Quelch, A Ballad; The Poetic License;
Memory of North Suttob, rather, Sutton; and Country People. A
distinguished group, I’m sure you’ll agree. I think I sent TPL and
and MONS to the Iowa Review and the Ohio Review. These poems were also
sent to Poetry Northwest, along with TBS, CP, HTG and probably
WSDISV. Prairie Schooner saw some of the poems, but I’m not sure which.
Since it is difficult for me to send poems out after one or
two rejections, I am especially pleased to be your client. Needless to say,
I am also pleased that the day has finally come when a literary
agency has contacted me about my poems. After all these years of
obscurity, it is great to be famous.
