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Section V

McNair to Hall: May 27, 1982

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Letter from McNair to Hall, May 27, 1982, Milne Special Collections and Archives, University of New Hampshire

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 May 27, 1982
Dear Don,

As you see, I have enclosed three poems, two
of which you have seen. I have revised the “Feet”
poem, but I did not change its ending. I may be
wrong not to change it–may well be–but I do
think it works at this point, having let the thing
rest awhile. The “Brother” poem has been revised also
so it should be less confusing.

If you like “The Before People”, please pass it on
to Joey.

Other poems–so many others–are in progress,
but they resist all my best pushing and prodding
thus far. I will send more when I can.

Best,

Wes

Read The Before People (published version)

See also a selection of McNair’s manuscript notes and drafts for “The Before People.”

The Atlantic to Hall: April 20, 1982

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Letter from The Atlantic to Hall, Page 1, April 20, 1982

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 April 20, 1982

Dear Joseph Amaryllis:

We’ll be happy to publish Wesley McNair’s “Mina Bell’s Cows.”
Thanks for sending it.

Yours,
Peter Davison
Poetry Editor

April 19, 1982

Mr. Joseph Amaryllis
Box 71
Potter Place, New Hampshire 03265

2/

For your contribution to the Atlantic Monthly
entitled “Mina Bell’s Cows”,
we enclose a check for $50.00.

Since the Atlantic is interested in first American
and Canadian magazine rights only, we shall be happy, on receipt
of your request, to assign the copyright therein to you, at any
time after publication date, reserving to ourselves the right to
vend copies of your contribution during the term of the copyright
as a component part of the edition of The Atlantic Monthly in
which it is originally published and for which copyright will be
claimed.

We are advised that this formal procedure is necessary
to protect your rights, as well as ours, under the very complicated
conditions surrounding the copyright laws.

Very truly yours,

THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY COMPANY
Lawrence J. Murphy
VICE PRESIDENT FINANCE & ADMINSTRATION

Read Mina Bell’s Cows (published version)

McNair to Hall: April 16, 1982

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Letter from McNair to Hall, April 16, 1982

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 April 16, 1982

Dear Don,

Sometimes I respond to your letters in my head
and forget I have not responded on paper.

Thanks for the time you took with the
poems. Again, I will have to put them (with
your letter) up for awhile to see what I
agree with and what I don’t.

But it is good to have your straight out
commentary, as always, and I thank you
for that especially.

Love,

Wes

 

Hall to McNair: April 2, 1982

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Letter from Hall to McNair, April 2, 1982

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 2 April 1982
Wes McNair
Box 43
North Sutton, NH 03260

Dear Wes,

These seem to me further along than the Father-Poem, but
I think that maybe they would profit by being kept around for
a while longer. I am taking so long, I am being so “patient”
(if that is really the name of it) that maybe I urge it too much
on others. When I wait, I am glad that I have waited… It is
not only that you change a word… Sometimes you see something
about a poem that is entirely new – like a way for it to mean or
go that you never even saw before. And I am getting up to two
hundred drafts these days! Maybe that’s a bit ridiculous…

I like both of these. “Feet” is a wonderful idea. I have
two kinds of objections, one of which is just little things about
single words, pacings, connections… Then there is the possible
area of implications not exploited enough, or not clear enough…

You will see that I am messing with things on the first page…
I feel that it is ambiguous when we do not have “that” in the
third stanza… I find “are” a boring word, and wonder if some-
thing like “lay” or a more interesting verb might be possible.

Then I find “to stand/ the body/ can take it…” The
transitive “stand” slows me down. Maybe it should… I’m not
sure it should.

But then I am bothered very much by the metaphor of “flight.”
Probably it is “the whole point,” as we say. But the feet have been
very much attached to the earth, and that has been the characteristic
of them, the lowliness of them, the footageness of them, as opposed
to voices that go hundreds of miles through machines… And then
they take it in its “low/mysterious flight…” and I really don’t
know what they’re doing or why it is the feet that would do that.
Although we can use the word “flight” meaning fast movement, it
surely means up in the air also, whatever we want. This seems
a low orbit…but why? How? And isn’t “maybe” “mysterious” a
cop-out?

Then with My Brother. I don’t understand the concept of
“taken/ into the doors.” Inside doors? Into the room which is
behind the doors? Banging against the doors, breaking your nose?
I think that it ends very well. I think that it is almost all here.
That image is disturbing to me though, because of its physical
confusion. Physical confusions perhaps in both poems.

Love as ever,
Don

Editorial note about this letter: Though McNair’s first drafts of “The Longing of the Feet” and “My Brother in the Revolving Doors” as sent on this date have been lost, the changes he made to those poems following Hall’s critique were small; in fact, his second drafts of these poems are nearly the same as the first. To find them and continue with the discussion, skip the next notes detailing McNair’s new acceptance from The Atlantic Monthly, and go to the series of three letters starting on May 27.

McNair to Hall: March 31, 1982

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Letter from McNair to Hall, March 31, 1982

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 March 31, 1982

Dear Don,

I am sorry you do not care for the father poem
in its present state, but I remain grateful for
your honest review of my poems. I will put it away
for a while. It’s much too close for me to come
to terms with any of your comments at this point.

I enclose $3.50 for the HM publication (payment
was $35), and I thank you not only for seeing
that one through but for passing the “Small Towns”
poem on to Joey for Poetry. The hit there lifts
my spirits considerably!

I’m also sending you, as you see, two new
poems, which I hope you like. Please let me know
when you can what you think.

Best to you and Jane, and love,

Wes

A note from McNair about this letter: The two unnamed poems sent with this letter for Don’s appraisal are “The Longing of the Feet” and “My Brother Inside the Revolving Doors.” The “HM publication” refers to Harvard Magazine, in which McNair’s poem “The Thin Man” was published (March-April 1982 issue).

 

Hall to McNair: March 25, 1982

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Letter from Hall to McNair, 03-25-1982, Page 1

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 25 March 1982

Wes McNair
Box 43
North Sutton, NH 03260

Dear Wes,

Well, you just cannot lose at Poetry. Only one this time,
but you cannot knock it.

And on the other hand, I am not happy with the father poem.
I think the end is just beautiful, and you have to start nearer
it probably. But there are all sorts of strange awkwardnesses
and inadequacies I think. You say “had you gone/ over and over,”
so that it is ambiguous, as if the act of leaving took place over
and over again, whereas I believe you mean the asking about it…
And then when you say “some world beyond my reach” you have two
clichés together, the world, and the physical reading business…
two dead metaphors, the commentary of “the worst/ of it…” and
then other things, all along in there in the middle, and I don’t
think that your language is much good, it seems slack… More
thinking! More feeling…more setting aside. Sorry about that.
But I really feel strongly about it, and I feel strongly that
you will feel it too. You are very rarely ever slack – so I
suspect that this poem is just emotionally a tough one.

Best as ever,

Don

Editorial note about this letter: Below is the poem Don questions in his letter, leading me to put it aside. Still, I knew by the depth of feeling I had reached in “To My Father” that it would be an important poem for me if I could ever sort out the material it contained. Though I never completed the poem, “To My Father” turned out to be crucial, its themes and images resurfacing years later in my long narrative, “My Brother Running,” and in poems I wrote afterward, particularly “Weeds.”

To My Father

Your were so tall your loved face
moved across ceilings. Your voice,
a cigarette’s light, floated
high in my bedroom’s dark. This is why,
after I asked mother had you gone
over and over, it seemed right
to think of you floating
and moving in some world beyond
my reach, why when you came back
twenty years later, I was so down.
You were not supposed to be
who you were: shorter than me,
slightly drunk and, the worst
of it, unable to see the difference
between living in the high world
I had imagined, and just
saying you did. And yet tonight,
having dealt with all the expectations
of the world and my own sons,
I don’t quite think of you
as a failed father, but more
like me, lost in a patch of weeds
and doing the best you could with it.
So I write this poem partly for me,
Partly just in case where you are now
they read, to say that in the end
of your booze-ridden life,
when your eyesight and second family
gave out at the same time
and, having no story left
in your crazy head, you lay down
on your back yard to plant seeds
you could hardly see, I wish
I had stood in that darkness,
as you once stood for me,
to tell you that I saw the garden
you meant, the bright flowers blooming
everywhere, no matter if weeds should grow,
no matter if, by some accident of timing,
you should not be there to tend it.

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