Wesley McNair

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Dear Don,

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

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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

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Dear Don,

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!)

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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 –

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Dear Don,

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.

Wes

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Dear Don,

I believe I forgot to send in my last letter
the copy of “The Thin Man” you requested.
Here it is!

Saludos,

Wes

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Dear Don,

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.

Thank you again,

Wes

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A quick answer to your question
about “Old Trees.” It has not been
sent or published anywhere.

Thanks for your kind words about it -–

Wes

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Dear Don,

Thank you for your good and kind letter. Of course
you may have “The Thin Man” for Harvard Magazine.
That you would request the poem lifts me somewhat
from the gloom of the past days. I feel extraordinarily
blessed to have your faith and good will.

Needless to say, I am grateful for your
continuous mailings and remailings of my poems,
and for your suggestions about my own
future mailings. I thank you especially for placing the
two poems in Poetry. Ever since I began writing
poetry ten years ago, I have wanted to appear
in that magazine. Having poems accepted by
John Nims is especially meaningful to me,
since he once encouraged me in my writing
at Bread Loaf. (I took a class called “The
Craft of Poetry” with Nims when I was
getting my M.A.) You may be absolutely sure
that the poems Nims accepted have not been
published in, or sent to, any other magazine
or newspaper whatsoever.

Last week, I sent a note to Nims, thanking
him for taking the poems and reminding him of

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our association at Bread Loaf. Even as I wrote,
I was unable to glory much in the acceptance,
it was so intermixed with the awful problems
I had created for us both. After reading your
letter, I am beginning to feel better about it.

Thanks once again for the kindness you
Have shown.

Wes

P.S. I have just read in The Argus of
your Caldecott Medal. What a wonderful
children’s book “The Ox-Cart Man” must
have made, especially with “primitive”
illustrations – just the right thing!
Congratulations!

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Dear Don,

Your letter of January 29 contains the worst
message I have ever received in the mail. I
am upset that you will no longer handle my poems.
But I am immeasurably more upset that I have
managed to hurt you and no doubt Jane
so terribly.

The least I owe you is an account of the
circumstances which led to my January 21st
letter to you. First of all, I sent the three
poems to Howard Dinin as a result of his
rather desperate request that I give him
some work related to the idea of “home” for
his first issue of The Boston Monthly, which
was short of material. There is no good
excuse for not letting you know about my
decision to send Howard the poems; I can
only tell you that since it was nine months

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after I had given the poems to you, I did not take
seriously the possibility that they might be
published by someone else. Needless to say, I
should have taken that possibility seriously. To make
matters worse, I let the whole thing slide until I had
forgotten it. I did not think about the poems again until
the night of our dinner, when it came up that I had
published in The Boston Monthly. You said you hoped none
of the poems were in the batch Joey had, and I said
“no,” seeing the seriousness of my lapse, and lacking
the courage to be forthright with you and face the
loss of your esteem. Afterward, I sent my letter,
which contained the “duplicity” you have
mentioned, and which took my lack of
courage one step further.

I cannot blame you for responding as you have.
You are wrong to imagine that I might “conceal
and equivocate” as a matter of course in my
dealings with editors, though I can easily
understand why you would so imagine. Ironically,

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the equivocation I have been guilty of with you,
a friend and mentor, I have not practiced with
anyone else. The only time I came even close
was when I allowed the woman from The Concord
Monitor to quote “The Thin Man,” assuming,
naïvely, that quoting a poem within an article
was not tantamount to publication of the poem.
That I have treated you in this careless
and dishonest way, failing to be straight
with you until the moment I was forced to,
is a thing that I will never forgive myself
for. I am entirely unable to square my
behavior with the appreciation and
generous support which you and Jane have
given me – without which I might well
have lost faith in my writing. I can
only determine at this point that I will
use what has happened to instruct me in
how to be more forthright in the future

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with others,
especially those I respect and love.

I remain deeply grateful for all that you
have done for me. I am profoundly sorry that I
have handled this thing so poorly.

Sincerely,

Wes

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Dear Don-

I enclose a mini-poem which I hope you like well
enough to pass on to Joey. Also: there are three
poems which I hope Joey will be willing to remove
from circulation – namely, “The Man,” “Country People,”
and “Memory of North Sutton.” Howard Dinin would like
to claim them for The Boston Monthly, would you please
ask Joey about this? It was good to see you both on Wednesday.
Diane will surely never have a better audience for
her slides from Chile. How great it was to share them
with you!

I have now started String too Short to be Saved,
a book which I cannot help liking, it reminds me
so much of my own early experiences on farms.
More about that later.

Best to you both,

Wes