I’m not sure which “Superman” poem you ask about,
since there are two. One (“The Thugs…”) has been published.
the other (“When Superman Died…”) has not. If you
meant “When Superman Died,” I’ll be glad to send it
right away – just let me know!
You’ve no doubt noticed that I’m including two recent
poems which you haven’t seen. I was planning to send
them later for your “judgement,” [sic] but something’s come up.
I’ve just received a letter from Peter Davison, whom I
wrote to ask about publishing Going Back Poems through
Atlantic Monthly Press. He said no to that, but I wants
me [sic] to send him some poems to look at for The Atlantic
Monthly. I would like to send the enclosed two, if you
think they are reasonably OK, along with two which Joey
currently has – ie, “Old Trees” and “The Fat Enter
Heaven.” Oh – maybe also “Hair on Television.”
But I will certainly not give Davison any of
the Joey poems unless he says they are available,
and unless you think it advisable to send these
particular ones. It may well be that Joey has hopes
2/
for them elsewhere – or maybe you feel that they (or
the enclosed 2) are not appropriate for The Atlantic.
Whatever, I await your view of all this.
Incidentally these 2 are not the only poems I’ve
finished recently. I’ve written two others, but I
am holding onto those because I’ve come to feel that
they might become segments of another poem. I will
certainly be sending these poems and others in some
future batch.
Thanks for your help!
Love,
Wes
Editorial note about this letter: Going Back Poems was for a short time an alternative title for McNair’s book in progress, though he eventually returned to his earlier title, The Faces of Americans in 1853.
Thank you for your bracing letter. I have mailed the book to
U. Illinois and Carnegie-Mellon–am about to mail it to U. Georgia. I have
also sent several letters about the book to the “big houses”, as you advised.
Needless to say, I am thankful that my publishing the book matters to you,
whatever the consequences might be, and I take hope in your assurance that
I will one day publish it. I will try to remember your warning about the
irony underlying all apparent successes for the writer.
You mentioned that you are in a period of uncertainty about your own
work. Perhaps this is a good time to tell you the story of a poem you wrote
not long ago which hit me like the dropped safe of the old cartoon, and
which helped me to write a poem–and later other poems–like it, even though
different from it.
I am speaking of your “Waterfowl” poem, which appeared on the back page
of APR 4 or 5 years ago. I believed then, and still believe, that no one
has written a funnier poem than that one. I loved its reliance on sources
in the popular culture. I loved how reckless and how wonderfully controlled
it was in its form and in its humor. And I was struck by its wonderful mixture
of humor and desperate seriousness. I read the poem shortly before I wrote
“The Thugs of Old Comics”. It was your poem and certain poems by Edward
Field that I thought of as I was doing “The Thugs”. Without your poem, I may
never have been able to complete my poem.
I am sure your poem also helped open the way to other humorous “pop-
cultural” pieces which I have worked on since “The Thugs”, and continue to
work on. While it is true that I wrote “The Little Louey Comic” and “The
Characters of Forgotten Dirty Jokes” before writing “The Thugs”, I did not
see the full possibilities of “pop” poems until your poem, Field’s poems
and the writing of “The Thugs”. Do you remember telling me once (and how
thrilled I was!) that “The Thugs” was the “perfect poem”, the poem “The
Little Louey Comic” wanted to become? What you did not know was that your
poem assisted in the completion of “The Thugs”, helping me to go beyond
“Louey”, and later to write poems like “Hair on Television” and one I am
doing now on “before/after” ads.
Of course, your poems about the region of [inserted: northern] New England are also very
important to me as a writer. They show me that solid work can still be done
about the place which inspired the poems of Dickinson, Robinson and Frost,
and they fill me with possibilities for my own regional writing. But I wanted
to write you here about a poem which actually influenced my writing, and
besides, I have written already how much I think of Kicking the Leaves,
whatever doubts you may have about your recent writing.
I hope I managed to lift your spirits a bit with this small
testimonial. Even if I haven’t, I thank you very much for that poem and for
writing it at the time I needed it!
These feeling [sic] simply do not end! Believe me I am
sympathetic with your feelings, but let me tell you that
when you have published a book – which you will – nothing
will happen; or at least it will seem that nothing has
happened. And this would be true whether it were published
by New Rivers or Atheneum. Even if something happens, then
you realize that the “something” is truly nothing. And
after you have published eight books of poems, you are still
convinced that no one has read you, and that probably you
are no good anyway. Or at least you are convinced of that
frequently. I have been going through quite a bad patch,
in my feelings about my own ability, my past work, and cer-
tainly my present work.
There is only one place, or one moment, in which one
finds happiness, and it is always momentary – because that
is the moment of actual writing, and of course that is not
always true.
So I do two things: I assure you that you will publish;
and I tell you that it will not make any difference! But I
do have a third thing to say: it makes a difference to me!
In connection with your own book, I am pursing two
distant notions, neither of which is worth talking about
at the moment.
I wish I could tell you the names of people at Viking,
Doubleday, and Knopf to write to. I don’t think it is
useful to send them a manuscript. You might write a letter,
tell them where you have printed, about the NEA – and ask
them if they would care to see a manuscript. Most publishers
do not read manuscripts that come over the transom any more.
Harper & Row used to, when Fran was there – and now it has
stopped.
I think that the University of Georgia with Zimmer is
a good idea, and why not Illinois, Princeton, and Carnegie-
Mellon?
At the University of Illinois Press, please address
the book to Lawrence Liebermann, and tell him that I asked
you to send it to him. [Written in margin: check spelling!]
I’ll be happy to talk with you about which poems to
send Houghton Mifflin, when the time comes.
2/
If you are happy with the writing that you are doing
now – as you mentioned – you are as happy as a poet can
get!
Fine to see small batches of poems. You won’t hear
much from Joey for the nonce, because summer is a bad time
for submitting things, and a slow time for hearing about
things.
Best as ever, and just keep to the bench, as the
scientists say,
Hoping that I might hear something positive from U.
Pittsburg about my book, I have held off writing to you
until now. You will remember that last year Ed Ochester
at Pittsburg asked me to resubmit my manuscript this
year. Well, the thing got rejected again. Ochester
said he liked the “Going Back to 5th Grade” sections
and “Faces of Americans,” and he re-invited me to
resubmit next year.
Weary of resubmitting – also to Yale, where the
book was also rejected – I am quite down about things
right now. I did not realize, I guess, how difficult
publishing the book was going to be. And yet I should
not be ungrateful, I know. I am very lucky to have
the NEA grant, and besides, others have tried longer
than I have so far to get books published, with no
better results. I will certainly come out of this,
eventually. I have put entirely too much stock in
the Pittsburg possibility – that is the problem. I am
in the process of resolving really and truly not to
“expect” in the future.
The thing to do now, I guess, is to send the book
to other places. Would it do any good at all to
2/
send it to places like Viking, Doubleday and Knopf?
That is, would these houses be likely to even read an
unsolicited first book of poems? I suppose you will
say “no” to this, and anyway, I am thinking
mainly of university presses for the book – Illinois,
Princeton and Carnegie-Mellon – if you think these
are good choices. Should I mail it to U. Georgia,
where Paul Zimmer now is? My main interest at this
point is in being published at a press whose books
are likely to be reviewed widely – and picked up
later by anthologies.
Earlier, you mentioned the possibility of Houghton
Mifflin. I do intend to send HM poems for
review in the fall, the procedure for those who wish
to qualify for consideration in the “New Poetry”
series. Since I have little confidence in my own
capacity to choose the “review” poems (my choices
last year, you may recall, led to my being
disqualified), I wonder if you would mind suggesting
poems to send when the time comes? I would
appreciate your help here, though of course I realize
that whatever help one gets, (to use your words) “it’s
a lottery.”
3/
I am happy with the writing I am doing now,
in spite of my current depression. (As I write
of “depression,” it comes to me that last night
I dreamed all night of falling – an interesting
new expression of the vertical metaphor which I
seem to write about so much!) I have decided
that I will not trouble you with the individual
poems I complete, as I have done in the past-
that I will send you small batches of poems instead.
My first batch is not yet ready, but I am writing
daily and steadily, and you shall see results in
due time.
There is, after all, no one whose opinion I value
more – or half as much – as yours. It is my
extraordinary luck that you have been there
with concern and encouragement, even in the
most discouraging times. That gives me hope
that the long wait will one day prove worthwhile.
I am everlastingly grateful for your faith
in my poems.
Many thanks for your good long letter about the poems.
I’m delighted that you like the “6 October…” I sent these
out to a good number of people, and I guess that most of
the people whose opinion I respect like this one best. It
goes over big at poetry readings! (Believe me, I do say
that with the sense of the ghoulish…) And Robert Bly thinks
it is probably one of the worst ones ever written, etc. I
sort of knew he would. He is crazy about anything connected
with my father… I mean sort of insane. Still, you have to
wonder… I am really glad that you like it.
I take most seriously your suggestions about revision
And will keep them with the poems to keep looking at your
Suggestions. I know that the Chickens poem will change.
I am not quite sure what seems unrealized in “The
Glass” now. You wanted me to break the first stanza into
two parts, but you did not make any other suggestions. Can
you make any further suggestions about this one? I really
think that your suggestions about Tending Fire are going to
save that poem, which I have felt slipping away from me…
That is, a lot of people have felt that the end of it was
too domestic or comfortable – and I couldn’t quite see that –
but now I see why it is, as I believe anyway – because of
the first three lines.
And I think you are really helping with remaking the
Whip-Poor-Will also – which needs it!
I will show you some more in time – and of course I
will show you these again when I straighten them out or
attempt to.
Finally I find the time to write you about the poems
you sent!
I do like them — all of them — very much. I believe
that “6 October 1980” is one of the most moving poems
you ever wrote, so complicated and profound are the
feelings of sonship which it expresses. It is a
wonderful thing. “Epithalamion” is also a wonderful
poem. The “positioning” of each of your reluctant
characters is perfect — Emily in the cellar “vanishing
against a pillar” (just the right word, that
“against”!) and Walt in the belltower with
the muscular young sexton. I love that piece. And
I love “Sonnet.” The last stanza of that poem is
just delicious in its sounds and imagery. I
believe that “Marbles,” “A Novel in Two Volumes,”
and “Scenic View” are also good, strong poems.
I have suggestions about how certain aspects
of the other poems might be revised – suggestions
which I hope will be helpful. One of my favorite
poems in its potential^”Poultry” is still, I think, not
quite finished. I very much like the way seasons
turn throughout the poem, the way the life and death
of poultry suggests to both boy participant and
adult narrator the transcience [sic] of human life. What
I feel the poem needs is a fuller reference to Luther…
or perhaps references to people other than Luther, who
2/
were alive once to eat the meals the poultry made, and who
are now dead. Without more allusions to Luther (at the
table, “leading in the singing of “hymns”, your word noted on
page 4? with others?) the poem’s conclusion seems to me
arbitrary. I do find the descriptions of chicks, chickens
and roosters most convincing, however…I love the
rooster section. One other question: In the 4th
stanza, should the phrase “when the egg making frenzy”
be changed to a phrase which more closely approximates
the other indented phrases of the section, which seem to
convey the continuous action of the hens in time
(moving toward “consumed”)?
About “The Glass.” If I have your intentions right:
it seems to me the poem should be presented in 3 stanzas.
I think the first stanza should speak of the world of
“permanence”; the second stanza, about the speaker’s
“heroic” movement through time, which leads to reading
the news about Emily Farr’s death; the third stanza,
about the glass. I especially like the image of the “old
man carrying buckets/among pale ferns under
wavering birches,” and I do believe this poem could
be quite wonderful, even though it is not (or so I
think) fully realized at this point.
“Fires for Tending.” I feel the poem should begin
3/
with the reading of the obituaries. The prologue of the first
three lines gives so strong an emphasis to the comfortable
domestic rituals and environment of the narrator’s
present that the movement into the past does not
achieve the importance that I believe it ought to have
in the poem. I feel that if the first 3 lines were cast
and the ordering were changed slightly, the narrator would
read his news, recollect the experience of the past,
and return to the surroundings of his present life,
feeling his old attachment to them, along with an
unsettling detachment. (This tension between attachment
and detachment comes through wonderfully well, I think,
in the last 2 lines.) Another thing about the conclusion:
I feel that the story should not be characterized as
“ordinary,” since that characterization stills the reverberations
that the memory might have. Incidentally, I wonder if
the full-out statement declaration of the last stanza – the “I
will preserve” should be replaced with a phrasing
which stresses the struggle against the fact of
forgetting…or against “the forgetful kingdom of death,”
as J.C. Ransom called it. I don’t mean to suggest
that the “struggle” should be expressed in any dramatic way –
only that it might be hinted at… I do hope I
have not written here about a poem which I might
write, rather than about the poem which this one might
become.
4/
“Whip Poor Will.” I feel that the last line of the poem
should refer somehow to the whip-poor-will’s “voice-lessness”
during the day. Stilling the bird’s song would be a bitter
way, I think, to bring the narrator and reader back to the
“real” world of the last stanza. Also, I like your
penned-in lines “but the real/bird lifts away”
better than the 1st and 2nd lines that appear in
the typed version of the last stanza. I wonder, too,
if the whip-poor-will’s flight into “far dark fields”
in the stanza one might be more strongly linked with
the bird’s flight into the narrator’s dream, which is
suggested in stanza two. The possible link between the
two seems to be cut off by the rooster’s crowing and
by the light of the second stanza. I think that the
“cock-crow” should be cut out, and that the darkness
of stanza one should extend into stanza 2, at least
until the reader is able to catch the connection
between the flight into dark fields and the flight
into the mind. The light, then, might foreshadow
the awakening to “reality” which eventually happens –
even as it (the light) suggests Wesley Wells,
who began his day at dawn.
If I have misread your intentions anywhere
with my suggestions recommendations, I am sorry. I certainly want
to be a help to you and not a hindrance. I feel this
5/
is a very strong group of poems, and I thank you
very much for letting me see them.
How lovely to receive your poems in
the mail. How much I am enjoying
them! I have read them already several
times.
I am writing this letter to thank
you for them – and to let you know
that though I will not be sending them
immediately, I will certainly be
“working on them.” I always need time
to let poems settle – my own or
anyone else’s.
I promise a letter about them
soon – am taking them with me
to Detroit and will be back with
a full response. Thank you again
for letting me see them.
Thanks for your note, though I’m sorry to hear the dis-
couraging news. It is simply a bad time for publishing a
book. And it may be a bad time forever, with the big publishers
in New York and Boston. I think I told you that my first book
was rejected thirteen times before it was accepted – and that
was a time when publishers were almost looking for new poets,
at least compared to now. Fran’s firing was a real blow to me,
to my optimism about things. I will keep looking and keep
thinking. When I see Jon Galassi – who is the editor at
Houghton Mifflin, but who has an assistant who reads most of
the poems that come in – I will approach him cautiously, and
that might be worth trying again. But any one possibility is
always an improbability. Meanwhile, we will get the poems into
some good magazines, and in the long run I think that will go.
Have a terrific time at Detroit. I spent seventeen years
only forty miles away. And there is a good art museum and a
good ballpark, and otherwise it is a pretty depressing and
depressed place.
You asked in your recent note whether I
had sent poems to Houghton Mifflin. The answer
is yes. I mailed five poems to the readers
for the “New Poetry Series,” to no avail.
I did not mention your name (as you earlier
said I might) because that seemed inappropriate
in an open competition: Perhaps I chose the
wrong five poems…I can always
rationalize that way.
More bad news yesterday. I got my rejection
from the National Poetry Series. At the
bottom of their form letter was a note
(unsigned) informing me that I had sent
“good work.” I don’t feel much heartened
by that, but I suppose it’s better than nothing.
I do appreciate your continuing faith
in the publish-ability of the book. You
lift my spirits every time I’m down about
2/
its fate! In spite of your wise
injunction to “expect nothing,” I am now
hoping for a good word from the Pitt Poetry
Series. You will remember that Ed Ochester
asked me to resubmit my manuscript
there this year, having turned it down last
year. I should hear by June.
I am enormously pleased that you like
“The Fat Enter Heaven” and that Jane
likes it. I have been working on a longer
“fat poem” for some time now, and on
other poems, but I am so slow I almost
lose patience with myself.
Next week I go to Detroit to lecture
on Winslow Homer at the joint meeting of the
Popular Culture and American Culture Associations.
That will perhaps provide the brief respite I
need to jar some poems loose!
Love to you and Jane,
Wes
A note from McNair about this letter: The “longer fat poem” I’m working on when I write this letter is “The Fat People of the Old Days.”
Thanks for the letter. Sorry I had not mentioned
receiving this. I love it, and it is with the New Yorker.
I did not show it to Jane before, so I took the opportunity
to show her this. As I knew she would, she enjoys adores it. I
think maybe you get better and better!
Sorry to be the one to have to tell you about Jim Wright’s
death. I guess there had been no news of it in the Globe
or any place. It will hit the poetry press in all the next
issues! There was a long obituary in the New York Times.
I am sorry that Fran is no longer able to consider
the manuscript at Harper & Row! I guess she had to send
it back, because she is going away for two months now, to
Europe and India, and she has not signed on with any new
house. And also, as she says, the scene in New York is absolutely
horrible.
Did you not send a sample into Houghton Mifflin, and
Jon Galassi? You probably told me what happened, but I
cannot remember. Refresh me please. I have a tremendous
habit of forgetting things, which I like to think is somewhat-
deliberate, as a way of dealing with seventy-nine different
items in the course of every day that I live. It is probably
my excuse for incipient senility.
I do have some other notions about the book, but nothing
that I can be concrete about right now, and nothing to be
excited about. But I keep it in mind!
