Sometime when it’s convenient, would you please
look the enclosed over?
The interview with Begiebing (did I tell you?)
has come and gone. The results should appear
at the end of this month of the beginning of
next. I await, cringing.
He told me he has decided to open the thing
with the story I told him about how I got
acquainted with you, and how you got to
know “my work.” There were many questions
about that, I guess because of the Rayno
article. I only wish I had thought to
speak about Jane in connection with our
first meeting. But I didn’t think, and
probably that is only one of my oversights.
So, as I say, I cringe.
2/
Got a rejection from U/Maryland today. I
imagine everyone wanted to go there. Missouri
and Denison also rejected me. Writing things
like “Jack Cooch”, I am not entirely sure why
I want to move. Mixed feelings!
While I’m on the subject of rejection: sent
to the Poetry Society of America an application
for the Alice Fay diCastagnola award ($2,000
for work-in progress). Given the line requirement,
all I could send (with appropriate rationale)
were two poems: “Mute” and “When Paul Flew Away.”
Have also asked Missouri to enter my book in
the Melville Cane and Great Lakes competition
for a first book. I am not holding my breath.
I appreciate your comment that I do
you a favor by being here, and writing what
I write. The favor you return, tenfold! Best
to you, Jane and the writing both of you
may be attempting!
& love,
Wes
JACK COOCH
Jack Cooch, superintendant
of the town dump,
has wrapped his house
in plastic, a sure sign
of winter. It sits
by the ramp to 89
like a great loaf
of bread nobody wants.
Outside on the porch
a mound of seatlessness,
drawerlessness, and other
kinds of imperfection,
picked with Jack’s own eye
for the perfectly good.
Some winter days
driving toward Concord,
you find him under that roof
past saving, rummaging
with a toothless
surmise. Some nights
you see him in a room
beyond the blowing plastic
of his windows, moving
in the afterlife
of discarded things.
–Wesley McNair
Editorial about this letter: Begiebing is Robert Begiebing, a professor at New Hampshire College (now Southern New Hampshire University) who interviewed me at Don’s suggestion for The New Hampshire Times…. The Rayno article was written by Garry Rayno for The Argus Champion concerning my Devins Award…. The “rejections” of paragraph four are related to my job search.
You can see, the Atlantic is absolutely
relentless! Paying you an enormous sum also!
Amazing.
They made out this form to be signed by
Joseph Amaryllis – with his Social Security number!
They are trapping me! I have Please typed your name in,
and when you send it back to them, be sure to
include a return address on the envelope for
the note you send with it or whatever.
Now off to The New Criterion!
Love as ever,
Don
Editorial note about this letter: This note arrived with the January 4 acceptance from The Atlantic.
Yes, Robert Richman has a difficult name – and
his colleague on the New Criterion is named Eichman.
All three of us seem to be doing pretty well
these days! Onward and upward with your January
writing!
Very good about getting rid of 160 books around
here. Excellent.
You understand: I might not want to be a judge,
when I found out the amount of the work. But thank
you ever so much for suggesting me. You do me a
great favor just by being there, and writing what
you write!
AUTHOR’S AGREEMENT
x Wesley McNair
Dear Amaryllis Inc.,
This letter describes our agreement concerning The Atlantic’s acceptance
of your work entitled The Last Time Shorty Towers Fetched The Cows.
(“the work”).
1. First Publication Rights. We understand that this is an original
work not previously published in the English language either in the United
States or Canada and that you have full rights to offer us this contribution.
You grant The Atlantic exclusive first publication rights in English in
those countries. This includes the right to reproduce and distribute the
work at any time as part of the issue or issues of The Atlantic magazine in
which the work first appears. It also includes subsequent microfilm or
microfiche sales.
2. Copyright. Under United States copyright law, you own copyright
in the work, subject to the rights you have granted to The Atlantic. The
Atlantic will include a copyright notice in its name on the issue or issues
of the magazine in which your work appears. However, if you, in addition,
would like to establish a public record of the copyright claim in your
name, you may file an application with the Copyright Office, Library of
Congress, Washington, D.C. 20559.
4. Warranty. You warrant that publication of the work will not
subject The Atlantic to liability for copyright infringement.
Please sign this form in the space provided below and return the white
copy in the enclosed self-addressed envelope to:
Lawrence J. Murphy
The Atlantic Monthly Company
8 Arlington Street
Boston, MA 02116
so your payment of $100.00 for the article may be processed.
Very truly yours, Wesley McNair Author (Amaryllis Inc.)Lawrence J. Murphy xxx-xx-xxxx Lawrence J. Murphy
Social Security Number Vice-President and General Manager
Editorial note about this poem: After Peter Davison, poetry editor at The Atlantic Monthly, accepted “The Last Time Shorty Towers Fetched the Cows.” he suggested additional changes for the poem. The published version appears, together with an explaining letter, in the footnote for February 16, 1984.
I will now be small. I didn’t get an NEA this time,
and I resent it.
Most of my submitted poems were first in Poetry
and The Atlantic. Some have been or will be in the
84 and 85 issues of The Anthology of Magazine Verse…
Others may be in the upcoming Pushcart book. And there
was work which won the “best poems” prize from Poetry.
I will bet not many on the winning list
had that sort of submission. I know
from my own sense of the poems they are among the
very best I’ve done–certainly miles beyond the
submission that got me an NEA four years ago.
Is the lesson that the poems you write are not as
important as the luck of getting the right readers for them?
I do think so.
Oh, well. You can’t win them all and shouldn’t,
as I do, expect to. I believe I have finally learned
the truth of “Expect Nothing.”
Now that I’ve vented spleen, I’m beginning
to feel good about returning to the beautiful planet
of the poem, free from the Great American Contests
of this world.
The letter to Robert Richman (such trouble he must
have with that name!) is off, promising work
soon from the redoubtable Mr. Amaryllis.
How wonderful about Jane’s success with
publication—and your own. What neighbors
to live with! I am about to start my January
writing—now with renewed vigor.
I have gotten rid of 160 books—
most of them sold. Am about to order more.
I didn’t expect to have such luck. I should
introduce a line of tomato relish.
Have written all follow-up notes and letters
to the U/Missouri Press for the wonderful trip
Diane and I had—and of course I mentioned
you as judge—this after your OK of the
last letter. I do hope to be able to light
just one firecracker for you—because of all
yours for me, and because they would not do
better in their search for a judge!
Love,
Wes
PS. Forgot to mention: I did have a complimentary
copy of The Faces sent to Robert Richman.
For you and Joey to know.
A note from McNair about this letter: Robert Richman is the editor of The New Criterion, who asked to see poems of mine at Don’s suggestion….In remarking about Jane’s and Don’s success with publication, I refer to their acceptances by magazine editors, mentioned in previous letters.
“What a year you have had,” Don writes in the final letter of this section looking back on 1984.
Wesley McNair on the road as a weekend teacher, c 1984.Letter from Poetry about the Tietjens prize, November 1984.
During this last year of our correspondence, there have been publications in TheAtlantic, Poetry, Ironwood, and the Iowa Review. Poems have been requested for three anthologies. Moreover, the appearance of my new book has led to a request by an editor at Norton to see a second book; the offer of a visiting professorship at Dartmouth College in the fall; and Poetry‘s annual Eunice Tietjens Prize.
The letters show how important Don has been to my success,sending my poems out in the person of Joey Amaryllis, and when my book comes out at last, advising me where to send review copies and prodding interviewers in New Hampshire. Our letters reveal, too, how important I have become to Don. In 1984 I send him more pages of criticism about his poems in progress than he sends me, adding to this, on August 24, advice against using Joey as a pen-name when submitting his recent formalist verse.
In his final letter Don contrasts my good year with his and Jane’s “lousy” one. He is no doubt thinking in part of Jane’s continuing bouts of depression, which he remarks about more than once in this early correspondence. He seems to have forgotten the good news that he has just been inducted as Poet Laureate of New Hampshire, even though, in the moment of writing his letter, he is wearing the sweatshirt I sent to him commemorating the event.
Donald HallJane Kenyon
Anyway, there have been lousy moments in my year, too. My moonlighting during the spring and summer at area colleges has interfered with my writing. And though I do not speak of it in these letters, I, too, experience depression, even though it’s less serious than Jane’s; in fact, the very poem Don discusses in his final letter is based on my low mood. This dark poem, which describes a journey by car through a scary New England “town of no” full of menacing houses and buildings, results directly from my fall semester at Dartmouth College, where I’ve felt isolated, and rejected by my sources as a poet.
But from one’s sense of imperfection comes the need to achieve perfection in art. So it is fitting that Don ends this selection of our correspondence by longing, despite life’s disappointments and distractions, to “look at a piece of paper again” — that is, to write poetry. Generous to a fault, he also reaches out to me, helping me once more to make the new poem as good as it can be.
