I was sorry to learn of James Wright’s death. It must have been
a very tough thing for you. Has there been any news of it in the press?
I have not read of it anywhere outside of your letter.
I came to Wright’s poetry late, though I did encounter the
Eisenhower/Franco poem (can’t remember the title exactly, and can’t
find the poem) earlier on, and I still remember the thrill of reading it.
I saw the Wright poems in your Contemporary American Poetry early, too,
but it was much later that I got to his books. Needless to say, he has
left many beautiful poems behind.
You are quite welcome to compliments about String Too Short To Be
Saved. And about the poems. I realize now that I did not mention
in my letter one of my favorite poems from The Alligator Bride – I
mean “Mount Kearsage”. Ever since you did your reading at Colby, that
poems has stuck with me. I can still hear the way you said its
wonderful last line, “blue ghost”. I often think of that poem as I
drift downward towards Crockett’s Corners from Colby and that mountain
rises before me.
Incidentally, I heard not long ago from Fran McCullough, who
sent my manuscript back saying she had hoped to publish it with
Harper and Row, but now could not and did not expect to be able to –
since it was a first book – with any of the houses she might join in
the future. I was pleased that she had taken the manuscript seriously
enough to advocate its publication, though, obviously, I was
disappointed to have it returned. I do appreciate all your help in
bringing the book to her attention. Who knows but before too long
your opinion of the book will be vindicated. Though you have warned
me to “expect nothing”, I can’t help hoping.
I am beginning to worry that you did not receive a copy of the
new-improved “Fat Enter Heaven”, since I have not heard from you
about it. I believe you were off somewhere doing a reading when I
sent the copy, so perhaps you never saw it. Anyway, I enclose another
copy for your perusal.
Diane tells me to say she has finished String and loved it.
Probably you know that Jim Wright died
yesterday morning. He had cancer, and would
only have suffered terribly for a few months,
if the cancer had taken its predicted course.
Pneumonia cut him off. I was with him last
Saturday, and it was terrible. I was with him
two weeks before also. Jim knew he was going
to die, when I saw him Saturday. Sometime I
will tell you about it. It is difficult to
talk about.
I’m terribly pleased that you like String
so much, and that it led you back to the poems
and that they held up too. Thank you so much
for telling me! I saw Diane yesterday and she
told me about reading String.
I need these things! Don’t we all.
I will be putting “Hair on Television”
to good use, I hope.
Best as ever,
Don
Editorial note about this letter: Jim Wright is the poet James Wright, with whom Don had a lifelong friendship, and whose work was important to both of us.
I want you know how much I like your book String Too Short To Be Saved. I feel close to many
of the book’s characters because you make me feel
close to them, but also because I myself met people
like them in my experiences on farms in the Cornish
and Meridian area during the 1950’s.
I especially like the way the concluding chapter,
“Out of the Garden” manages to recapitulate earlier
themes as it states its own. The last sentence of
“Out of the Garden” is breathtaking. Still, my
favorite chapter is “The Blueberry Picking.” I have
read few things in my life so good as that reminiscence
is. It is so deeply metaphoric and yet so natural
and “real” in the experience it relates. And
what feeling one senses in the speaker as he looks
back upon the boy self in his “Thirst,” and upon
the old man who hopes the boy will “remember.”
I am just dazed by that piece.
Reading String Too Short (wonderful, wonderful title!)
2/
made me return to Kicking the Leaves to discover
new meanings in the poems of that collection.
All over again I love “Kicking the leaves”, “Flies”,
“The Black Faced Sheep,” “The Ox Cart Man,”
“Names of Horses.” I also went back to The
Alligator Bride to reread some of my favorite
poems in that – or any other – collection: “The Days,”
“The Stump,” “The Old Pilot,” “New Hampshire,”
“The Repeated Shapes,” “The Man in the Dead Machine,”
etc. And I saw for the first time how often you
are in poetry what you call yourself in String
Too Short – an “elegist.”
How wonderful it has been to read this book
and your other books through it! Now Diane
has String Too Short, and no one can tear
her away from it. (She, too, visited farmer
relations in New Hampshire when she was a girl.)
She joins me in thanking you for the book. It
is wonderful to know that a person whose work
I like so much likes my work, too!
Love,
Wes
P.S. I include “Hair on Television” for Joey’s collection
of my poems. It was rejected by APR –
I take it that this is not only not
been printed anywhere, but also not been sent
anywhere, not even to the New Yorker? I do
want to try the New Yorker with it. Two
words on a postcard: “Not sent.” And off it
goes.
Just in case I didn’t make this clear
on the hastily written postcard I sent
you today – I would very much like Joey
to have “Old Trees.” And neither of you
need worry about my sending poems to
Danbury that have been sent elsewhere,
since I will not be sending poems elsewhere.
I am just delighted that you like the
poem. I wish I had more to send.
And the fact is, I do have lots of
stuff in the notebooks, but none of it is
ready yet.
Anyway, I keep working and hoping.
In the meantime, thanks for your
comments about “Old Trees,” and for
your interest in suggesting it to Joey.
Thanks for the manuscripts, and the letter. I think
that Old Trees is just marvelous. Very very beautiful, and
the rhythm in the new lineation is just wonderful. …And I
believe that this one has been published before, has it not?
I think you would mentioned it [sic], if it had not been. If it has
not been, please let me know right away. (Well, please let
me know anyway, because I think I will hold up on sending out
the three available poems until I heard from you about this
one for sure.)
Delighted to have The Thin Man for Harvard Magazine.
It will take a while before it comes out, I am afraid.
Agents get ten per cent, and Joey is no exception.
Good luck with the contests – and expect nothing! I talked
to Fran yesterday, and she has not yet settled on a new publishing
house, but I expect that she will soon.
Fine about having sent “Hair on Television” to the APR.
Let me know what happens, either way.
Given my tendency toward maudlinity, I do not trust myself to
elaborate on the respect and gratitude I feel upon learning of your
(and Joey’s) offer to send out my poems. So I will limit my response
to a simple thank you, hoping that both you and Joey will know my
thank you is most deeply felt.
You asked me to tell you where the enclosed poems have been sent.
According to your letter, “Holding the Goat” and “When Superman Died”
have been rejected by the New Yorker, Paris Review and Poetry; “Going
Back to Elinore Quelch” has been rejected by the New Yorker, Poetry,
Paris Review, Atlantic, Virginia Quarterly Review, Harper’s and The
Nation; and “The Thin Man” and “Hair on Television” have been rejected
by the New Yorker. One more thing you should know is that last Monday
(having waited three weeks after you wrote to withdraw “Hair on
Television” from editorial consideration) I sent “Hair on Television”
to American Poetry Review. Should “Hair on Television” be returned
unpublished, rest assured that I will send it immediately to Joey.
Incidentally, I wish you would please tell me what percentage
of the pay from Poetry Joey should have when my poems are published there.
I seem to recollect ten percent, but perhaps it was more…
In the enclosed batch is a revision of “Old Trees”, which I do
hope you like. I have changed the length of the poem’s stanzas from
two lines to three, and I’ve changed an image that you once questioned.
The poem feels better to me, but I would very much like to have
your response. Would you write me about it when you have a spare moment?
I still await word from “the contests” – the Walt Whitman Award,
the National Poetry Contest, the Yale Younger Poets – and from the
Pitt Poetry Series. Don’t know if I told you that Wesleyan rejected
the book. I’m preparing myself for the possible depression of spring!
In the meantime, I’ve brought a “five-subject notebook” to
continue with old poems and new^inprogress. Perhaps I will have more
to send soon.
Could you send me a copy of “The Thin Man”? It has
not returned, and it is possible that it will not.
And for that matter, why don’t we go back to working
with Joey again. I am over my heat, and it is obvious
that this Bad Accident will never come near either one of
us again. Let us just start in. But when you send me
back the poems – for sending out – would you please tell
me again where they have been? That is, would you repeat
my information to you? I buried all the old records in
my correspondence box, which is now anonymous among rows
of boxes up in the Dark Hole upstairs. So I need to know
where they have been, and I would not necessarily remember.
I hope that by the time the two poems come out in Poetry you will really be able to feel good about them.
Yes, the Caldecott was good news. So many great ideas,
when you are free-lance writing, fall apart and bring in no
mortgage-helpers. But then something like this happens, and
it is a little annuity for several years. Believe me, I did
not think of the writing only in terms of money! …but I guess
I think of the Caldecott mostly in terms of money!
