For the first time…

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Dear Don,

Well, I was hoping the poem was better than you appear to think.
I will just have to wait for awhile and then look at it again to see
what can be done. Thank you for your thoughts, as always.

I write to ask for still another favor. Would you be willing
to send a recommendation for me to the placement office of Associated
Writing Programs?

The reason I need the recommendation is that I want to leave
Colby-Sawyer. I need a place that is more stimulating, and which
takes up less of my writing time. I have been hoping to leave for some
years, actually, but it has taken me a long time, as you know, to get
degrees and publications in order. For an extra advantage in job-hunting
it would be nice, of course, to have the book placed. But who knows?
Maybe the book will be published soon enough to give my applications
a push. In the meantime, I will just have to hope that my publications,
grants and recommendations will serve well enough.

I would not be asking for the recommendation at all if I were
planning to apply for a position in American studies. As it happens,
I have a fairly complete dossier (at Middlebury) in those areas. But
I’ve decided to apply for jobs in creative writing (an area in which
I’ve done some teaching in the past), or in a combination of creative
writing and literature. That is, I plan finally to adjust my teaching
assignment to my real self, kept secret for so long! And for that I need
a different sort of statement.

I do know how painful recommendation-writing can be. If it is too
painful at the moment—because you are busy with poems, textbook
revisions, or freshman themes—please feel free to wait. The AWP dossier
will have at least two other recommendations in it by the end of next
week. Yours can come along later if you wish.

The jobs I’m interested in right now, by the way, come from the
most recent AWP job notice. One is at Arizona State; the other, at
Loyola University of Chicago. As I say, I am a little nervous about
not having placed my book before applying to these places, or to any others.
Under the circumstances, a comment from you about the manuscript I now
have probably wouldn’t hurt, if you wouldn’t mind furnishing one.

Incidentally, I did get a bit of good news the other day. Alan
Pater, editor of the Anthology of Magazine Verse & Yearbook of Am. Poetry,

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wrote to ask me for permission to reprint “The Bald Spot” in the 1981
volume of his anthology, going shortly to press. All hail to Joey
for placing the poem in Poetry in the first place!

Thanks again for your comments on my poem. I hope you are enjoying
the foliage around Eagle Pond Farm.

Love,

Wes

P.S.—I enclose an addressed, stamped envelope for your convenience.

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Wesley McNair
Box 43
North Sutton, NH 03260

Dear Wes,

Good to hear from you. I fully understand your wish
to leave Colby-Sawyer. I think you may have picked a very
difficult time to move. Do not burn any bridges! …I do
not mean that you should not be looking, and my recommendation
will go out today.

Still, I have a number of observations. I suspect that
most other places would be no more stimulating then Colby-Sawyer.
Colby-Sawyer has a pleasing sort of faculty. You would have
better students at many other places – but of course you would
virtually never, in twenty years of teaching, have what we
might reasonably call a “good poet.” And you would surround
yourself with a whole lot of bogus professionalism, the wretched
hustlers of the academy – who prevail at Dartmouth, Michigan,
Arizona State, etc.… But not nearly so much at Colby-Sawyer.

Second, it is well known that it is virtually impossible
to get a job in writing right now, unless you have three or
four books, and preferably a Pulitzer Prize. I am almost
serious. Everybody looking for work now has an M.F.A. I
don’t think you need an M.F.A.! I don’t think an M.F.A. means
anything. But probably it means something to Deans.

And then, because there are so many small presses and
small publishers, lots of people apply for jobs saying that
they have published nine books, seven, thirteen… And in a
sense they have.

There are also good people, with books, with M.F.A.’s,
looking for work. It is really a terrible time. It is also
a terrible time in mathematics, physics, etc. But creative
writing is one of the worst areas right now, because of the
frantic overproduction of M.F.A.’s in the last fifteen years.

Third, or fourth or whatever it is…do try, if you are
looking for a new job, to get something that includes the
teaching of literature. The swamp of the creative writing
industry, in this country, consists mainly of illiterate
lizards who cannot teach literature at all because they
haven’t read anything. To be isolated with them in a “creative
writing department” is a fate worse than teaching in a room full
of sub-literate young ladies, which is what you are used to.

2/

[X] I was at Arizona State last autumn and I think it is
in the swamp all right. Still, anything might be welcome
relief, and a good change, so I would not try to argue with
you about taking the job if you’ve got it. But I suspect
that there will be two or three hundred applications for it,
and that most of them will list books, and that some of them
will really have published two, three, or four books.

I am being discouraging! I don’t want you to expect
too much… But I am not trying to get you not to try –
much as I would prefer it if you stayed in North Sutton!

That is nice news about the Magazine Verse book. Jane
had a letter from them too. In the letter to her, the man
offered no money at all. Did he offer any to you? She is
going to ask him for some. And then if he won’t give her
any, she will probably let him have it for free.

I have learned to ask: does the ink-manufacturer donate
the ink? Does the paper-manufacturer donate the paper? Is
there absolutely no sum whatsoever to the secretaries typing
these letters? To the editor himself?

There will be more poems in more places before very
long, I do believe. Peter Davison wrote a very sweet letter
of rejection – and I would predict that he would take something
within a year. I don’t suppose I should make such predictions!
But I wouldn’t be surprised…

Oh my goodness, the foliage is fantastic.

Love as ever,

Don

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How do you like my new note paper? I’m not sure
I do, but Diane bought it for me, and here, we waste
nothing!

You were good to take the time to warn me about the
Teaching of Creative Writing in America. I am so often
idealistic about the teaching of anything. Though I
should certainly know better by now, I still imagine the
perfect class, the perfect approach, the perfect colleagues.
I fear my mind is clouded (so to speak) with such thoughts
as I dream of a job as an instructor of writing.

You may be right in questioning my move from
Colby-Sawyer. Here, in any event, is my case against
Colby: Enrollment there is declining. In the past year,
the decline has been quite serious. Though I have
tenure, I am not certain whether the College itself
does. I do not relish the fight which may be
coming for the dry end of the deck dock. And I worry
that if I don’t try to move now, before I am 40,
I may face an even tougher time later, with
employers who are looking for a prettier, and younger
face.

Of course, those “sub-literate” girls do get me
down occasionally – as do some of the less visionary
faculty members I have to deal with in the maintenance

2/

and development of the American Studies program.
And I am not at all happy with the pay scale at
the College, which is not likely to improve any time soon.

[Written in margin: But this seems ungrateful as I reread
and I should add that I have made a few good friends at CSC, have
had some very good students, and have often been treated generously by the institution —]

Yet I am torn. I have a sabbatical coming up
next year. If I were to leave this year, I would
miss that – and more time off for writing. (However,
staying for the sabbatical would mean staying for one
year beyond the sabbatical year…two years in all.)
Also, I would miss northern New England in the (likely)
event I had to leave the area. Needless to say, I
would also miss the proximity to you at Eagle Pond Farm.

Since receiving your letter, I have decided to try for
jobs combining literature and writing, and emphasizing
the former. My credentials are better for that sort
of position anyway, and I certainly would not want
to end up in the lizard-infested swamp you describe.
Besides, I would miss teaching literature. I am glad
for your guidance there.

It could always happen that after all my efforts,
I wouldn’t land a job. That would settle the whole
thing for me – I would stay two more years, period.
Anyway, I will keep you posted, and should this letter
occasion new thoughts on the matter, I’d be happy to
hear what they are.

I was happy to learn of the reading you and
Jane will give at Carl’s next Monday. Of course
I will be there. It will be good to hear Jane read

3/

(I’ve never heard her before) and to hear some of her
new work. And I look forward to hearing again
some of the wonderful poems of Kicking the leaves.
Do you take requests? Would you consider reading
“Flies,” one of my favorites, which I’ve never
heard you read? I would also love to hear an
earlier, shorter poem – one whose title I never can
recall – about the public urinals. That poem, too,
is a particular favorite.

But these may not fit your format for the evening,
and I will be most grateful to hear whatever you
may decide to read. (Believe it or not, I can still
hear whole passages of poems you read during that
wonderful evening at Colby three years ago!) I
shall be sorry to miss the trumpeting, bowing
and flugling you do to “tune up” before the
reading. I can picture the chipmunks and other
poor dumb animals fleeing deep into the woods
as you prepare yourself on the way over!

Anyway, Diane and I are glad to be beginning
next in this week in this most positive way. We will
see you Monday!

Love,

Wes

P.S. Wanted to tell you that I will not be sending the
revision of the “fat” poem I just completed or
anything else I have worked on – for a long time.
This time I mean it. You are right that
finished poems should be kept for awhile.
Certainly all poems should be given time. And
when one is writing during a grant or sabbatical
period, there is a tendency to want to
finish everything and count it all up. I have found
that a destructive inclination, and I am trying
mightily to resist it – to let poems develop in their
own time, whether it happens to fall within the
grant period or not. Whenever you may get poems,
though, rest assured I am working, working.

P.P.S. I was delighted with your prediction about Davison.
Whether it proves out or not, I am glad for the
Faith it shows you and Joey have in my poems.

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Wesley McNair
Box 43
North Sutton, NH 03260

Dear Wes,

I will see you before I mail this – but I’ll be
damned if I’ll give up the opportunity for writing a
letter. I like your notepaper. How do you like mine?
Mine is courtesy of Peru, Indiana, where most of the worst
and most notorious letter writers of the United States
buy their stationary because it is so cheap. Marianne
Moore and I, Robert Creely and I all share the same
stationary.

Please realize that the main problem is that jobs
are terribly difficult. That is, probably two thousand
people apply for each job listed, and of those two thousand
one thousand have a Ph.D. already, and another seven hundred
almost have it. And for a job in creative writing, if only
and probably most of them can claim a “book” or two… Because
hiring is done on the basis of statistics rather than value,
they are most likely to get the job than you are – at this
moment. Once you have a book things will get easier. There
will still be hundreds and hundreds of and hundreds of people,
terrible poets with terrible books, who will statistically
equal you! It is all so ridiculous!

I fear for Colby-Sawyer also. And I admire the place,
and think there are a lot of good teachers there, certainly
many very hardworking ones, and it is a good place for those
one out of four girls who will manage to mature in the head,
to get alive, while they are there. I fear for it. Muller
seems to be a clever man, and maybe he can work miracles. But
it is scary. I feel really frightened for the good people
teaching there – which obviously includes you! Jack Jensen
my minister and dear friend… so many others. Maybe Carl
is the lucky one, retiring at this time.

The payscale also I realize. though the other thing is
more serious. But of course if you were paid twenty-five per
cent more in Tempe, you would probably have less money in
Tempe than you have in North Sutton!

Therefore if I were you and I were offered a decent
job elsewhere I would probably go also! I think you will
not be offered a good job elsewhere right now – which is not
to say that you should not try. I believe that you should try.
I believe however that the chances are against you, and that
therefore you can take your sabbatical!

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Wanted you to know your reading of “To a
Waterfowl” last night brought out something I
in my stupidity hadn’t seen before. While the poet/speaker
mocks the affluent ones who “keep” him (the
wealthy businessmen, their wives and college-age
children), he also mocks himself, as a writer of
the poetry, which “shocks” the wives – the mad poet
of feeling, naked in his motel, watching King Kong
Sucks Mount Fugi.

It’s that ironic speaker – ironic accuser, I
should say – that gives the poem’s humor such
dimension, such seriousness, I now feel. I
had sensed the despair in the poem before,
but I never sensed all its sources so clearly.
In a short space, the piece says a lot about
the darker America – its wealth, classes, art
and artists.

By the way and for what it’s worth, I still
like the first version of the father (brother) poem.

It was good to see you, even if briefly.
I hope you made the kick-off!

Love,

Wes

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Wes McNair
Box 43
North Sutton, NH 03260

Dear Wes,

Many thanks for your letter, and I am
glad to hear what you say of “To a Waterfowl.”
It does have this social content… I have
always thought a little the less of it, because
its content was more outward than inward, and
so subject to performance… But really, it
is simply another idea of poetry – a more Horatian
idea.

I like the first version of the father/
brother poem. I guess I like it a little better
with the change of pronoun and fa for bro…
Just because it seems a little directer, more
into-the-eyes. But the poem was essentially
there the first time.

I have been going back to the new father
poem and returning “Forgive Me,” but I am not
sure. The guilt is real, but I am not sure
that the request for forgiveness is.

Best as ever,

Don

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Dear Mr. Amaryllis,

Thank you for letting us see Mr. McNair’s
poems.

I like, and would like to accept, two of
them (“Hair on Television,” “The Fat Enter Heaven”)
if Mr. McNair would change “tampons” to anything
else hawked on television.

My reason is that “tampons” right now has too
many painful associations with “toxic shock syndrome”
and suffering and death. It’s a gruesomely dissonant
not in this poem—though it might be fine elsewhere,
anywhere where gruesomeness was the intent.

I return the other poem just to save paperwork.
If Mr. McNair can rework his poem just a little, we
can accept both at once.

With all best wishes,

Sincerely,
John F. Nims

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Wes McNair
Box 43
North Sutton, NH

Dear Wes,

Good news from John Nims. I think that his
point about “tampons” is well taken – for
accidental reasons, as he says. It is the kind
of thing where you might be able to restore the
word in a year or two, but I would think that
another word might be equally acceptable. What
do you think?

I am keeping “The Fat Enter Heaven” here,
but will return it with the (revised?) “Hair
on Television” when I write him again.

Actually, he has a couple of other newer
ones now, which the New Yorker has (mistakenly)
let go. He did not know he had a couple newer
poems, when he wrote this note. So we will
hope that he may have more than two, to print
together, next time you come out in Poetry!

Best as ever,

Don

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Dear Don,

How wonderful it is that Joey has managed to
interest John Nims in the poems! I have long hoped
someone would see something of worth in “Hair
on Television,” and “The Fat Enter Heaven” is a poem
I feared no one other than you, Jane, Joey and I
would like. I am very glad they will appear in Poetry
and very grateful to Joey for his good efforts and his
continuing faith.

Of course Nims is correct, as you say, that “tampons”
should be changed. I enclose a touched-up revision,
which I hope he, and you, will find acceptable.

Contrary to my stated intentions of two or three
weeks ago, I also enclose two new poems. The reason
is I am worried Joey is running out of stuff to
send out. Where he is getting other poems to mail
to Poetry – and to the Atantic – I cannot imagine,
but he must be at the absolute bottom of the barrel.

Would the two poems help Joey with his attempts
at the Atlantic (suggested, I believe, in an earlier
letter?) Or anywhere else?

2

Please let me know if you think to, and thanks again
and again for all you both have done in my behalf
at Poetry!

Love,

Wes

WHERE I LIVE

You will come into an antique town
whose houses move apart
as if you’d interrupted
a private discussion. This is the place
you must pass through to get there.
Imagining lives tucked in
like china plates, continue driving.
Beyond the landscaped streets,
beyond the last colonial
gas station and unsolved
by zoning is a road. It will take you
to old farmhouses and trees
with car-tire swings.
Signs will announce hairdressing
and nightcrawlers.
The timothy grass will run beside you
all the way to where I live.

– Wesley McNair

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Dear Don,

Here I am with another of my famous
second thoughts. If you have no violent
objections, I would prefer this version, with
“mini pads”, rather than the other, with “maxi pads.”
A small change, I know, but important
enough to make this the final and definitive
revision.

Thanks.

Love,

Wes

HAIR ON TELEVISION

On the soap opera the doctor
explains to the young woman with cancer
that each day is beautiful.

Hair lifts from their heads
like clouds, like something to eat.

It is the hair of the married couple
getting in touch with their real feelings for the first time
on the talk show,

the hair of young people on the beach
drinking Cokes and falling in love.

And the man who took the laxative and waters his garden
next day with the hose wears the hair

so dark and wavy even his grandchildren are amazed,
and the woman who never dreamed mini pads
could be so convenient wears it.

For the hair is changing people’s lives.
It is growing like wheat above the faces

of game show contestants opening the doors
of new convertibles, of prominent businessmen opening
their hearts to Christ, and it is growing

straight back from the foreheads of vitamin experts,
detergent and dog food experts helping ordinary housewives discover

how to be healthier, get the clothes cleaner and serve
dogs meals they love in the hair.

And over and over on television the housewives,
the news teams bringing all the news faster
and faster, and the new breed of cops winning the fight
against crime, are smiling, pleased to be at their best,

proud to be among the literally millions of Americans everywhere
who have tried the hair, compared the hair and will never go back
to life before the active, the caring, the successful, the incredible hair.

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Dear Wes,

Yes, it is nice about Poetry isn’t it?
Terrific. …As you remember, Nims has not
yet accepted them! But he has largely promised
to accept them, so I expect to forward an
acceptance slip to you before long.

If you will not keep your stated intentions,
Joey will help you out. Joey will not send out
those poems for a few weeks, waiting for you
to make a change! The only one that I can see
is the a-typical syntax of the middle sentence
of “Where I live.” Syntactically and in its
punctuation if it were like the rest of the poem,
there would be a comma after “gas station,” and
probably the line-break would be different. I
am not sure that it is a bad thing. It certainly
does slow me down and make me go back and parses
the sentence… But it would take me a while
to figure it out for sure also. But I don’t
want to send it out and then get a new version
in the mail… So why don’t you look back at
it for a while? I will hold on.

Best as ever,

Don

I like them both!

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Dear Don,

Have just gotten back from Keene, where Diane’s
father’s funeral just took place. He was in the hospital
for three weeks, had a broken hip, which (because he
was a “bleeder”) was complicated to fix. Eventually
the operation on the hip led to two other operations –
one to prevent a blood clot in his leg from moving, the
other to remove a very diseased gall bladder,
which was preventing the blood from clotting, even after
medication for coagulation was administered. But the
bleeding wouldn’t stop; indeed, there was much more
of it after the latter operations. And so he died.
It’s been a sad time. That guy meant a lot to all of us.

The fact is, all the news I have for you today
is upsetting. I just learned from the editors of
The Journal of Popular Culture that “The Thugs of
Old Comics” was never published by them, even though
they sent me a note of acceptance back in the fall
of 1976. The poem was to be published, or so I thought,
during my year out of the country. It occurred to me
the other day that I never did receive a copy of
the issue the poem appeared in, so I wrote to ask

2/

about getting one. No one there has any record of
receiving or accepting the poem, I am told, and, of course,
it never did appear.

It is the sort of half-assedness I’ve come to expect
from The Popular Culture Association; which seems to
screw everything up, from conferences to subscriptions.
Initially, I was ticked at the magazine editors,
as you can imagine, but I have come to think the
foul-up may be to my advantage because the poem is,
I think, a good one that better magazines might be
interested in. Anyway, I do want you and Joey to
know that I have told the JPC I will publish
the poem elsewhere – called to this, actually –
and the editor I spoke with – Pat Browne –
sheepishly agreed concurred with my decision to do so.

I therefore enclose a copy of the poem. It would
perhaps go well with the “pop” material which
Nims has accepted. Or maybe, do you think, at
The New Yorker? Whatever Joey decides to do with
it, I will be ok, I’m sure. He knows best, and he
has just proved it again by working the recent
combination with Nims!

Do you recall your suggestion that the word “beat”
in my earlier version of the poem might be changed to “beating”?
I did make that change, as you see, but I am still a bit
worried that the “-ing’s” pile up at the end of the poem.
If you think not, I’m happy. —And speaking of the end,
here I am at the bottom of the pages – so I’ll stop.

Love, Wes

THE THUGS OF OLD COMICS

At first the job is a cinch like
they said. They manage to get the bank teller
a couple of times in the head and blow the vault door so high
it never comes down. Money bags line the shelves
inside like groceries. They are rich, richer
than they can believe. Above his purple suit the boss
is grinning half outside of his face.
Two goons are taking the dough in their arms
like their first women. For a minute nobody sees
the little thug with the beanie is sweating drops
the size of hot dogs and pointing
straight up. There is a blue man flying
down through the skylight and landing with his arms
crossed. They exhale their astonishment
into small balloons. “What the,” they say,
“What the,” watching their bullets drop
off his chest over and over. Soon he begins to talk
about the fight against evil, beating them half to death
with his fists. Soon they are picking themselves up
from the floor of the prison. Out the window Superman
is just clearing a tall building and couldn’t care less
when they shout his name through the bars. “We’re trapped!
We got no chance!” they say, tightening their teeth,

thinking, like you, how it always gets down
to the same old shit: no fun, no dough,
no power to rise out of their bodies.

– Wesley McNair

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20 November 1980

Wesley McNair
Box 43
North Sutton, NH 03260

Dear Wes and Diane,

I am so sorry about Diane’s father. It is a wretched
time. This December will be the twenty-fifth anniversary
of my own father’s death, and last October I turned older
than he was on the day he died. He is still there for me,
[Written in margin: I know you know the poem.]
freshly, around the corner, with the familiar sound that his
feet made walking – only he is younger than I am now. Very
strange.

Jane’s father, who is seventy-six now, is chronically
ill. He has had cancer twice, had a little stroke last year,
has congestive heart failure – and they may, or may not, –
be coming out for Christmas. We worry about him, as you might
expect. How old was your father, Diane? He certainly packed
things in together, didn’t he? Horrid.

Wes, many thanks for the poem, which Joey will make
excellent use of. Very good to have it now, and I think that
we will do better by it. Good for them, in their fecklessness.

Best as ever, love, and sorrow…

Don

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Dear Don,

Diane and I both appreciated your note. I have
from time to time during this period thought about your
poem to your father. I imagine I will be writing about
my father-in-law, too. His life feels so small to
me now, and so unsung. I want to change that,
if I can.

Jane has our sympathy in her apprehension about
her father. We have known that feeling, too, and
it’s a difficult one to deal with.

But we press on – like the people of Frost’s poem
who “turned to their affairs.” There’s no other way.

I enclose a freshly typed version of the “Thugs”
poem, in case you would prefer it that way,
rather than in mimeographed form, as you have it
now. Suit yourself, and if Joey has already
sent the poem out, fine.

I also sent along a slightly revised version
of “Where I Live.” True, it has only been a
couple of weeks since I sent you the first version,

but I have been sitting on the first version for some
time already, and I’m therefore as sure as I’m
likely to be that the poem is ready in its present
form. Incidentally, I, too, worried about that
line-break you mentioned and played with it a great deal.
Your comment gave me the courage to make the
change of the enclosed. I do feel, though, that
there shouldn’t be a comma after “gas station.”

Please tell Joey, then, that it’s ok to send
out “Where I Live” and “Trees That Pass Us.”

And thank you, as usual, for your help.

Love,

Wes

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Dear Wes,

But there is also a bitterness, a self-
bitterness, in Frost, in that poem and also in
the Home Burial, about turning one’s affairs.
You know there’s nothing else to do, but he
regrets that the world is such that there is
nothing else to do! Well, don’t we all.

Thanks for the thugs and the where I live…
Joey moves. Onward!

Don

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Dear Don,

Just so you won’t think you have a Louis Untermeyer
on your hands, I do want you to know I am aware
of the resonance of that last sentence in “Out, Out-.”
I think the sentence means just what you said.
On the one hand, it suggests the people are outrageous
in being so sensible as to turn to their affairs,
given the strange and violent death of the boy, and
the seeming malevolence of the saw that caused his
death. But the sentence also implies, as you say,
that there is little else for the people to do – and
besides, their ignorance (some of it willed) saves them
from living with “fright,” and perhaps from giving
their own hands to saws.

I happen to feel that a certain malevolence
hung over Herman (my father-in-law), especially
in his last days, and that he was aware of it, too.
So in a way, I see what the boy, with Frost, sees.
But I also identify with those people, and so
my quotation. With them, I feel the danger of
“fright” and the pull of “affairs.” More knowing

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than they are, I nonetheless respond as they respond.

There, I hope I have cleared things up.
I will try not to take so much for granted next
time I quote Frost!

Good that Joey is moving onward with
the new poems. I hope for some good news,
as my book has been rejected by Georgia,
with no more than a form letter. Earlier, I
got a note from Costanzo at Carnegie-Mellon
which said that he like the book very much,
but that he would not be able to publish it
this year as he had already accepted all the books
the current budget would allow. Did I tell you
I got a form rejection letter from Houghton
Mifflin some time back? Over two years after
the book’s completion, the rejections keep coming in.
I am not too down about that yet, but I do
hope something breaks by spring. Otherwise, I
could be in trouble.

Ah, well. To affairs! In that department

3/

I should tell you about my sabbatical application
I have decided to take a year-long sabbatical
next year if I can get it – and I think I can.
I haven’t ruled out a move from Colby, but I
do believe I should not pass up the possibility
of a year (15 mos. Actually) for writing if
I can get it. I would, besides, much rather have
completed poems than a job at any university,
however stable or prestigious.

I let you know how this goes. I should
know by mid-December.

The writing still goes slowly and well.
I shall hold all back, with no help from
Joey, for a while though.

Thanks to you and Joey for all your help,
and regards to Jane!

Love,

Wes

[Click image to view]

2 December 1980

Wes McNair
Box 43
North Sutton, NH 03260

Dear Wes,

Good to have your good letter. I am delighted that
you are applying for a full year off. You are acting according
to the Hall principal, which is to save nothing, conserve
nothing, and devote every possible moment and piece of energy
to writing the best that you can. When I had taught for two
years in Michigan I applied for a Guggenheim because I was
so crazy for time to write in. I did not get it. I had
saved $2000 from poetry readings, book reviews, etc. – and
we took the year off, Andrew five and Philippa just born –
and I have never regretted it for a moment. So many people
waste their lives doing sensible things.

May you get it. What is at issue? I am assuming that
you might either have a half-year at full pay or a full year
at half-pay, and that therefore you asking for a full year
at half-pay. (That was the way it was at Michigan and the
way it is at many places. Naturally enough I always took
the whole year at half-pay!)

Sorry about the bad news. Form letters reveal that
Georgia, like most places, is a lottery. If I were editing
for a big university press now, I bet you I would reject good
things with form letters also! Not that I approve of it! But
when you get so many manuscripts in the mail, it is incredibly
hard to keep any judgment at all. Of course you are right to
keep it out, and under these circumstances to keep it out
multiply. Of course I continue to hope that I might sometime
be able to be helpful.

You have really been getting a lot of work done with your
time off, wonderful and good for you… Also good to hold back!

Best as ever,

Don

[Click image to view]

Dear Don,

Thanks for your words of support about my sabbatical
decision. I will remember that Hall principal and your
obsession about people wasting their lives doing sensible
things.

The news about the sabbatical is good. It was approved
just after I sent my last letter. That means 15
months of solid writing, a gift from heaven. I was
a bit worried about being granted a full year, since I
have had a lot of time away from the college recently
(was gone in 77-78, and am, of course, gone this term).
I believe the committee which approved my application
had the prerogative or recommending the half-year
alternative if it seemed American Studies was suffering
as a result of my absence. But I have been grooming
Pat Anderson for the past several months to replace me
as co-ordinator of American Studies (again, to
give myself more time for writing), and I am sure
the knowledge that Pat will be running things soon helped.
Also, I convinced Wally before the committee made its
decision – before I submitted my application, too – that
Carl should be replaced for the benefit of the A.S. program,

2/

this in spite of the college’s position that a “new Carl”
was not needed. As it turns out, the new person will be
able to take some of my courses, as will Pat.

The pay for a full-year sabbatical at Colby
is ¾ – not ½ – of the professor’s salary. The ¾ pay
policy was instituted at the college by faculty vote a
couple of years ago. Diane and I figure that my
salary, plus hers, plus the money we get for
renting part of the upstairs, will carry us through
so that Diane will be free during evenings for work
on her ceramics, I will be a “househusband”
(in the parlance of the talk shows), just as I am now.

As you can imagine, I am just ecstatic to have
this time. It will help me to capitalize on the
momentum I have gained from the current time
off.

And the momentum is significant. I have
several poems – many more than I have ever had
at any one time – finished and nearly finished in
my notebooks. And I am speaking here not of

3/

poems I have sent to you already, but of new work.
I am sure that with the addition time off, I will be
able to complete a large share of the second book I
am currently working on. For the first time in my life,
I can call myself a poet, without misgivings.

Thanks for your comment about the work of this
term, by the way. I can only say there is much
you haven’t yet seen. But there has been a lot
of work, and knowing how things might have gone,
I feel very fortunate in this. Naturally, I also
feel lucky to have had the sympathetic attention
of Fran McCullough, one of those who read the
poems I submitted for my N.E.A. grant. And I
am mindful of who first brought these poems to
her attention.

So in spite of my difficulty with that book
of mine, I feel blessed in my writing, and
in the continuous help and encouragement of
yourself and of Joey Amaryllis.

More poems after a while. In the meantime,
all the best to you in your writing, too. And
to Jane in hers.

Love,

Wes

[Click image to view]

8 Dec. 1980

Dear Wes,

Wonderful about the sabbatical. Colby-Sawyer
has made up for its (one person’s) insensitivity
in connection with the current grant.

Having fifteen months off in a row will ruin
you forever!

That is where I learned my taste for such liv-
ing as I do now, taking a year off here and there.
Well, may you join me in – as people sometimes
suggest – “retirement.” Of course I work a hundred
hours a week, in my retirement. It is the only way
to go however! Love as ever,

Don

[Click image to view]

Dear Wes,

That ought to be a very good poem… “Riffled”
is a cliche, false-color. The last line sounds too
much like a last line! It might end better simply
without it. It is absolutely perfect iambic pen-
tameter, which is one reason why it sounds like
a last line. And “lovely” seems just vaguely honorific
to me… What kind of song is a “lovely song”?
I think I like the floating trees. I wish it were
not iambic at all.

Don

[Click image to view]

Notice of Acceptance

The editors of Poetry are pleased to accept the
following for publication:

HAIR ON TELEVISION
THE FAT ENTER HEAVEN

Wesley McNair
c/o Amaryllis, Inc.
Box 71
Potter Place, NH 03265

[Click image to view]

I haven’t written recently
because I have been on a trip
to see my brother in Wisconsin –
and I have been swallowed up by
holiday activities, which have included
an extended visit from my mother –
in law, bereft this season.
But I have been glad to get
your notes, one about my recent
poem (which I shall have to revise)
and the other about my sabbatical –
and I have appreciated your thoughts about both
things! Please let me know when you hear from
Nims! More poems later!  Love, Wes

[Click image to view]

Wes McNair
North Sutton, NH 03260

Dear Wes,

Thanks for the card. Here is the latest
acceptance slip, just arrived although dated
15 December.

My big son cracked up the car on December
28th and has been in New London Hospital ever
since. He will be home here with us by the
time you get this letter probably. He will be
all right, but he has back injuries, and has to
lie flat on his back for a number of weeks.

Best,

Don

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Dear Mr. Amaryllis:

Thanks for yours of December 24. We’ll be delighted
to publish “Trees” by Wesley McNair in the Atlantic.

Sincerely,

Peter Davison
Poetry Editor

[Click image to view]

Joseph Amaryllis, Amaryllis Inc.
P.O. Box 71
Potter Place N.H. 03265

For your contribution to The Atlantic Monthly
entitled “Trees That Pass Us In Our Cars”
we enclose a check for $36.00
[Written below: -3.60 = $31.40]
in payment of all rights.

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 the 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

[Click image to view]

Dear Don,

I do hope your “big son” is at least relating ok –
taking nourishment, and even drinking an occasional
beer, as I think I recollect he enjoys doing. At least
what happened can be mended – no doubt the mending
goes on right now, and that is good. My thoughts
are with you during this unpleasantness.

Thank you for sending the notes from Poetry. I
am awfully pleased to know the poems will appear there.
The lift this gives me is especially important at
this time, since, to tell the truth, I happen to be
going through a very down period. In the past
few weeks, I have found myself crying a lot,
immersed in regrets of various kinds, painfully
aware of the cost of running too hard in
my life. I am told “This Thing” happens to
others. Did “it” happen to you at roughly my
age? I have been, I think, fighting it off
for a couple of years, at least. But the thing
is here now, full force. I guess I am relieved

2/

in a way to have lost control, to have found this new
contact with my emotions; yet how much everything
hurts! And how irrelevant the “main memories”
of my life feel!

You can see, then, why I have not written to you
for a while. I believe I am ready to do better
with that now. But I did want you to know why
this lapse!

Even writing is hard to do – that is, poetry writing –
especially when I am in the process of discovering
how much about my “inner life” my poems contain,
even when they are about subjects quite removed
from personal experience. Of course, I always knew
all my poems were autobiographical, as everyone’s
are. It’s just that I never knew how much
autobiography was there!

Anyway, I do send a poem along – a new
version of a piece you saw earlier. I hope
to be sending other stuff, too, in the not-too-distant
future.

In the meantime, best to you, your son, and
your wife – and thank you again for all your notes.

Love,

Wes

[Click image to view]

Tuesday
More good news! The Atlantic takes “Trees”!
So sorry you’ve been low. Letter & cheque
follow at end of week. $36 – 10%!

Joey

[Click image to view]

Dear Joey,

Thank you for making
my day.

Best,

Wes

[Click image to view]

Thanks very much for your letter from The Atlantic and the
check. I thought Davison had taken “Old Trees” instead of “Trees
That Pass Us,” and so I am twice surprised. Anyway, it is
awfully good to be appearing in that magazine.
Also, thanks for your words about my “bad patch,” I’d
hope to be reborn soon, as the lack of sleep alone is killing me.
I am very sorry to learn of your own current bad patch.
Lest whatever “guilt” you may refer to makes you feel like a
bad man, please remember that you have saved my life
as a poet, and continue too do so. Whoever may be taking notes
on us both has a whole page about that.

I am in the process of rewriting “A Dream of Herman,”
and I have the thing done except for the last line. The problem
is, I still like the line, I knew it was perfect iambic
pentameter when I wrote it, and I liked the way the poem
found its way to the line, resolving itself in content and form.
I feel that way now. I sense you do not like the perfection
of the line, meter, especially given the lack of meter in the
rest of the poem (except for the movement toward iambic
in the next-to-last line). What really worries me is that you
seem so sure of your position in this, since that usually
means I am dead wrong. Yes, I say, I like the
line and am therefore unable to find a suitable alternative
for it. I even like “lovely,” because for me the reference to
“trees” gives the word a definition it wouldn’t ordinarily have/
takes away the vagueness you have mentioned.

I may very well be unable to see the poem clearly because
of my closeness to the material. I do know the tendency toward
sentimentality one has with this stuff. Perhaps that is what you
hear coming through in that last, perfect line. (Maybe you
hear sentimentality in other pieces?) I thought I was
saved from sentimentality of the closeness of the ride to a
hearse ride, and by certain lines which conjure up Herman,
and half suggest, at the same time, that he isn’t there (“as if
just back” “breathing the scale,” etc.)

Please tell me more if you can, about the last line!
I need to see it better. The shortest note will do…
Would it be any help to get rid of the first “as”?

Thanks to you and Joseph again for The Atlantic
publication!

Love,

Wes

P.S. Manuscript is now out to other places—U.
Alabama and the National Poetry Contest. Next month
is just Yale and Princeton Pittsburg—again! Will soon be
sending ten (published) poems to the Discovery/Nation
contest.

[Click image to view]

January 26, 1980

Dear Don,

I realized after you left Carl and me today
I had not asked you about your son.

How is he doing? Are his injuries so serious
that he will be at your house for a long
time?

Crazy of me not to ask, since this
has been on my mind.

Anyway, it was good to see you, new
haircut and all. I do hope you found
your check!

Best to you and your son,

Wes

[Click image to view]

Wes McNair
North Sutton
New Hampshire

Dear Wes,

It was good to see you, however briefly, yesterday…
and today I have your letter, mostly about Herman. I am glad
if the bottom seems to be raising a little. …I do appreciate
having helped some other people, from time to time – very much
including you. I believe it and I warm myself at that fire.
And then I remember Robert Frost, as quoted by Lowell in that
poem about Frost, Frost always so miserable about his family,
saying how little good his own successes did his family. Well,
Andrew goes off Thursday, and I suppose I will keep my fingers
crossed for the rest of my life – or his. I have hopes for him,
with some reason I think. But his is a tenuous hold, really.
He is another casualty of the sixties and the war, like many
many of his generation. I don’t suppose he will ever really
be free of it. I mean simply that he grew up at a time when
resistence to authority was decent – and somehow or other it
was a revolutionary act to drop acid when you were fourteen
years old.

I have been going over “A Dream of Herman,” and, yes,
I do feel certain about the last line. Of course this does
not mean I am right! But I feel very certain. And I
understand about loving certain lines. They give one everything
one could ever ask for! They are the golden dream! When I wrote
Ox Cart Man, it ended with: “bees wake/ roused by the cry of
lilac.” And I still think it is just plain exquisite. But
it was decorative, finally; it came not at the end but after
the end… Louis Simpson made me take it out! Sometime maybe
I will use it some place else.

The last line here looks like a last line. It looks
like something cherished and set apart and framed and put on
top of the piano. The fact that it is iambic lends to this
quality. It is not the only thing. Everything in it claims:
beauty. But therefore, somehow, it seems to look at itself,
and not at Herman or at the experience. It seems to be poetry!
(I will understand that everything I say is answerable. But
you reading this letter any way try to understand how I can
mean these things negatively.)

I do have a suggestion. Cut it out. End the poem
instead with something like this: “And then he lifted his
sacksx and opened/ one more flourishing song.”

My “flourishing” is no good, but it is meant to do
something like the wideness of the trees, and the spectral
quality of the moment. You could end it simply “one more song”
but the line would be terribly short, and I think we could
stand the perfect adjective right there. I’m a little troubled
by the way the lines at the end get more consistently long,
anyway, and would be grateful for a short line, tying me back
to earlier line-lengths.

I think of one weird coincidence – and that is all
it is. In The Alligator Bride, look at a poem called (I
think it is called this) “The Old Pilot.” That was my little
elegy for my first wife’s father! I did indeed have some of
the same problems. And I am not sure that I avoided sentimentality.

I do not find this poem sentimental – except I guess
in a sense in this last line, probably especially with the
word “lovely,” but really with the whole gesture of the line.
I think we should end with a fantasy of the real saxaphone [sic]
bursting into real $ong [sic].

Love to you as ever,

Don

[Click image to view]

Dear Wes,

Got your note. Andrew is doing very well.
He is up and around and cooking all the time, but
he needs to wear his brace. Tomorrow he starts
the journey back to New York, as I drive him down
to a friend in Massachusetts, who will then take
him on further.

Best as ever,

Don

[Click image to view]

Dear Don,

It was good to be with you and Jane last week.
Diane and I were sorry not to have seen Jane this week,
but I am sending her the book I would have given her,
so all is not lost.

I write to you out of the frustration of having, as my
poem says, “no fun, no dough”—and out of the need
to do something about that, in the long range. I’ve been
considering writing a textbook, one that might bring
at least some extra money in from year to year.
I have two possibilities in mind. The first is a book
about interdisciplinary themes in American culture.
It would involve students in the study of relationships
between and among history, literature and art in
various periods of the national culture, and would
be used in American studies and cross-disciplinary
“humanities” courses.

Perhaps the book is too specialized. My other
idea is an introduction to poetry, which would
include poems, critical notes and questions for
students.

I feel I would have time to work on a textbook

2/

during my long sabbatical in those hours when I am
not writing poems. What do you think? Am I
crazy? I just can’t get the words of a Fullbrighter
I met in Argentina (from Southern Cal.) out of my
mind. “Do a textbook and you’ll always have
extra money coming in.” I guess I feel that if
he can write one, knowing (as our conversation showed)
no more about literature than I, I can do it, too.

As one of the most successful authors
of textbooks around, you will no doubt have advice
for me. I would very much like to hear it—

Love,

Wes

[Click image to view]

Wes McNair
N. Sutton, NH 03260

Dear Wes,

Good to have your letter.

Are there any textbooks which resemble the one that
you propose on interdisciplinary themes in American culture?
On the whole, I think this one is the less likely. If there
are no other textbooks in the field, any publisher will be
reluctant to take up a new field – and of course there are
far fewer courses which would use such a book, than might
use an introduction to poetry. On the other hand, there are
dozens of introduction to poetry texts!

There is an old rule in the textbook business: if
somebody proposes a book telling you that it is absolutely
new, and nobody has ever thought of doing this before, reject
the book! It is a very cynical field. The usual notion –
the old wisdom – is to find the one or two books in the field
which are selling the most copies, and do another book which
is very much like them, maybe taking the best features of each,
doing a few new things in it, but very little, and covering
everything that they pretend to cover – and then bring it
out and advertise it as absolutely new and the perfect thing
for everybody’s course, knocking every other book out on its
rear-end.

Do you know Perrine… Sound and Sense? I hate it.
It is the one to shoot for. Probably the second best seller
in that field right now is X. J. Kennedy’s Introduction to
Poetry. There are others by Nims and Simpson, which sell
a little every year but not terribly much… there is the old
Understanding Poetry, which sticks in there. And I have two of
them, in a sense. One is my old The Pleasures of Poetry, which
has never done very well, and the other is the poetry section
of my new Holt book, To Read Literature, which will probably
be issued as a separate text, the poetry part by itself, next
year or so.

Perrine is full of lies by simplification. Kennedy and
I are known as too sophisticated.

The ones that sell best integrate a lot of poems into
many chapters, and the subject matter is pretty well decided
upon for you, and even mostly the organization. Then usually
these books have a brief anthology of poems for further study
appended to them. The trouble with Simpson and with my first
one is that they had a brief introduction, not organized particularly
as a text – no study questions and so forth – followed by a good
anthology. Apparently most teachers want – though most teachers
will tell you that they do not want – something that leads them

2/

by the hand.

I know so much about this, I would take twenty pages
to tell you about it. Think about it, and if you continue
to want to do one, let us get together and talk about it.

I think that the first thing for you to do is to work
out a plan for such a book, which would detail what the chapters
would contain, and what sort of thing you would do by way of
study questions and by way of a supplementary anthology…
then in order to convince a publisher you would need some
sample pages, maybe one whole chapter and a couple of things
from other chapters…and then you would have a sort of
prospectus for a book which you would be worthwhile (sic) to
send around to publishers. I do know some people in the
business. I think I could be of help.

It is always wise to remember: some textbooks make
a tremendous amount of money, another percentage make a
small but gratifying regular income… And most textbooks
fail and do not make any money at all. However, it is better
than gold mining, and more remunerative than writing excellent
verses.

Best as ever,

Don

[Click image to view]

Dear Mr. Amaryllis:

Enclosed is the uncorrected proof of Wesley
McNair’s poem, “Trees.” Please have him look
it over carefully, making any necessary changes
or corrections, and return the galley to me
in the enclosed envelope.

Thank you.

Very truly yours,

Nina Engelhardt

Assistant to the
Managing Editor

[Click image to view]

Don,

Good news: I am one of the finalists
for the Walt Whitman Award. Please keep
fingers, legs and whatever crossed until
the end of March. Regards
&
Love,

Wes

[Click image to view]

Dear Don,

Thank you for your long and thoughtful letter
about textbook writing. And thanks to Joey for
the Poetry proofs.

I will do my best to write more soon. I seem
to have no time at all right now because I have
taken on an extra course in (of all things) “Business
English” [2 nights per week] at N.H. College (Manchester) to make up for
the financial loss I told you about. And, my
materials for a three-year teaching evaluation
are due at the end of the month. Whew! More later!

Wes

[Click image to view]

Dear Don & Jane—

We would like you to come for dinner
on April 1. This is not a trick (we will
not say, “April fool—no meal!”)

But if you can’t come then, how about
the 8th or 9th?

Book is gone to Missouri—also (revised)
to Pittsburgh.

Love,

Wes

[Click image to view]

Anything ever happen with the end of A Dream
of Herman? …Joey is a little confused these
days, and I think it is the new medication. He
wants [you] to confirm that the following poems are
not published: Old Trees, Calling Harold, The
People Upstairs, The Fat People of the Old Days,
not to mention The Thugs of Old Comics, and Where
I Live.

Love,

Don

[Click image to view]

Dear Don,

I have just returned from a six-day trip to Washington, D.C., to
find your card asking about the publication of poems. I have not
published–nor have I sought to publish–any of the poems you named.
I do want to point out, though, that I have received a note
from the director of the Wilory Farm poetry contest (the note was in
the mailbox with your card), explaining that “Where I Live” has been
chosen for a fifth prize in the contest, and that the poem will be
printed in a booklet that will be sent out to other contestants only
and copyrighted in my name.

To clear up any possible doubts, I should tell you a couple of
things about this. One is that I wrote to the director before submitting
my poem to ask whether the contest would interfere in any way with the
future publication of the poem. The answer was no. The other thing I
want you to know is that I would have written you about the Wilory Farm
plans whether or not you had sent your card. I do not intend to repeat
my mishap of a year ago.

I do not think there is anything here that would prevent Joey
from sending “Where I Live” out, but I want him to know about the note
just in case he has any misgivings. Please let me know what he thinks.

No, “A Dream of Herman” is not finished yet. My Great Sadness and
the hectic schedule which the New Hampshire College course has caused
have limited time for revision or new work. I am sending a new version
of “The Fat People of the Old Days” with this, though. Please replace
the other version with this one if the poem comes back unpublished
and if you have no doubts about the changes I have made.

No word yet from the Academy of Am. Poets about the Walt Whitman
contest. Though I “expect nothing,” I do manage to check my mail.

I hope all is well with you and Jane–also that Joey is doing
better with the new medication.

Love,

Wes

[Click image to view]

Wes McNair
Sutton, NH 03260

Dear Wes,

I asked you because I was confused, not because I dis-
trusted you.

However, you have removed another poem from the possibility
of publication for pay! I cannot believe that you have forgotten!
Last year you were astonished when I told you that publication
in the Concord Monitor – or any publication – precluded re-pub-
lication in almost any magazine that paid anything or took
itself seriously.

Of course that remains true for [this one]. It matters not
at all what the director of the “Willory Farm Poetry Contest”
tells you. Very decent of him, I am sure, not to mind your
reprinting it – but the point is that the magazines are not
in the business of reprinting from other publications! This
is really too bad, because it is a poem that I am sure that
we could have sold. In return for a fifth prize, we lose
the poem.

Just to be clear. The fact that the present publisher
of a poem tells you that there is no problem about reprinting
it tells you absolutely nothing about whether somebody else
will want to print it under these circumstances or not. And
the answer is virtually always no.

Please do not submit poems for any kind of publication –
even just for other contestants, it doesn’t of course matter
who the hell is supposed to read it – without telling Joey.
Because again he may have gotten himself in trouble, by sending
out a poem which, if it is taken by this magazine, he will have
to withdraw, thus offending a poetry editor.

Best as ever,

Don

[Click image to view]

Dear Don,

I see I have done badly by the poem
and by Joey. I did not mean to, but
it seems I did not mean not to enough
to think the thing through.

I will send nothing out from now on
except my book. That’s my position, and
you may be certain I will not budge from it.

I am sorry for the upset I have caused.

Wes

[Click image to view]

Dear Don,

Finally, I manage to write!

I thought time would be easier to find after my course at NHC
concluded at the end of April, but then Diane went into the
hospital for a hernia operation. Now, she is at home, recuperating,
and I am trying to keep the house in order. I write this just
after getting the kids on the bus, and just before starting housework.
Soon, I will be taking this to the mail and going to the college to
pick up final exams. So you see, time isn’t easier to find.

Fortunately, Diane’s recuperation is going well. Yesterday,
she was able to do some work in her studio, and she is able
to spend more time on her feet every day. She hopes to be
well enough by June to go to Haystack–a ceramics
school in Maine, whose month-long session I paid for
with NHC money…the only good thing which came out
of that experience. Obviously, she will be staying away from
the liquor store for several days.

The news on my book is all bad. I will soon be one of
the most famous also-rans in American publishing. I was
a finalist in this year’s Walt Whitman contest, and I was
a finalist in the Princeton poetry series. AWP just wrote to
say my book received “serious consideration” (the note was
attached to their copy of my manuscript). The book is now
at Pittsburgh and Alabama. You will remember that
it got to the final reading in Pitt last year and the

2/

year before. I doubt the pattern will be broken this year–unless,
perhaps, the manuscript doesn’t quite make it that far.

I’m trying to decide whether I should change the format
of the book. Perhaps the title The Faces of Americans in 1853
and a new arrangement of the poems would make the thing
more “marketable.” What do you think? Unhappy as I
am about seeing the book through another cycle of readings
next year, I fear I will soon be facing that prospect,
and I have the feeling a new approach is needed.

As I’ve implied, the Colby-Sawyer term is almost
over now. I will be able to write soon, and I am looking
forward to that mightily. A month ago, I wouldn’t have
been able to say that. I was still going through my
“bad patch,” which turned out to be far more extensive
than I thought it might be. The nutso activity
of the semester was finally a good thing for me
since it keeps me away from my inner world, which was
in a terrible flux. Now, I feel freer to deal with
that world. And I miss writing awfully.

The latest news from Colby-Sawyer includes two
acquaintances of yours. One, Wally Ewing, who left
the college in January to manage–and invest in–a
business which failed, is now managing the Kearsarge
golf course, which the college recently purchased. The
other, Carl Cochran, will soon be ending his association

3/

with the college. Tomorrow, he will be feted by the English
department at Pat Anderson’s house. We are giving him a
pewter plate inscribed with Henry Adams’ words about
the teacher–“The teacher affects eternity; one can never
tell where his influence stops”–Also, we are notifying
him that the American studies program award will now
bear his name.

My day’s schedule calls! Blessings to you and Jane,
and happy spring!

Love,

Wes

[Click image to view]

Wes McNair
Box 43
N. Sutton, NH 03260

Dear Wes,

Very good to get your letter. And it came at a time
when I was on the road almost continually, so you find me
unusually slow in replying. Last weekend we flew south,
Jane to Virginia to the Orrs, and me down to Clinton, South
Carolina, where I gave the graduation speech and got an
honorary degree at a little place called Presbyterian College
in Clinton, a nice little place where I have read my poems a
couple of times. After the graduation, a young poet named John
Lane drove me seven hours to Charlottesville. And the next
morning I tied up with Jane and the Orrs. We worked on poems
for a day and a half, and then flew back here. Tuesday night
I saw the Celtics beat Houston, Wednesday morning answered
some mail, Wednesday noon did a reading in East Andover that
I had agreed to do fourteen months ago, and after that I flew
to New York. Ihad (sic) dinner with Andrew that night, and the next
morning addressed the Oxford University Press’s sales force,
whipping up enthusiasm for the Oxford Book of American Literary
Anecdotes. After that I flew back to Boston, drove out to Exeter
and did a reading! Then I had to hang around there for a couple
of days to talk with students. Just got back up here Saturday
night, and I have to go off again Tuesday night, and all day
Wednesday – but after that I get to stick around for a while,
thank heaven.

I hope that the financial situation begins to steady-out
now. Sorry to hear that Diane has had to go through an operation.
That is always a lot of fun. Good for Diane with the months
at Haystack – which I hope will work out all right. I mean to say,
that she will feel well enough to go.

You say that news on the book is all bad, and of course
I know what you mean – but being a finalist in all these things…
being a bridesmaid, in this case, is a sign that you will be a
bride. I know it is small comfort to hear these things – but I
still think Iought (sic) to tell you the truth!

I think the title is good. I think you should probably
continue to change it to make the best book possible, if you
can determine what that is. When I was sending my first book
around, I changed it every single time, between rejections,
so in a sense the same book was not rejected thirteen times,
which I always say. You are older and the book is better – but
still I think that you lose nothing by dropping some poems you feel
less confident about. Ten years from now, if you continue to like
them, you can publish them at that time. A poem is not destroyed,
simply by being left out. And if you make a better book – or even

2/

merely a more fashionable book – I think that the bird in
hand is worth cooking.

I feel that I am about to be able to get into a good
patch of working on poems. Usually if I feel that way it
happens. I need one. I have not sent out a poem for three
years. The house is full of almosts. But I am not sure that
any of the almosts is as good as the four or five best poems
in Kicking the Leaves. Well, who am I to say anyway?

I knew that Wally had had bad luck with his nightclub.
I did not know about the golf course. I’m delighted to hear
about the honors for Carl, who is a wonderful teacher, who
sometimes I think wants to convince us that he is not. You
have always been around him and seeing him at work, but for
me the exposure has been briefer. But perfectly clear. I hope
Carl enjoys retirement. I think it is a little frightening
for him, although he also looks forward to it. Nothing like
that is ever unconflicted!

Thank you for writing, and good luck to us all! I
mean in our work especially…but why not everything else?

Don

[Click image to view]

Dear Don,

Not a new poem–just the old one
with the revisions I mentioned typed in.

If I am lucky, this is ready
to become one of the next batch.

Am working on many other things,
but progress is, as usual, slow. I
should have a reasonable group of
things by October, though.

When is the Ploughshares coming out?

I await that and the probable return
of my manuscript from Pittsburgh…

Something to look forward to, and something to dread.

Best in your work.

Love,

Wes

When Paul Flew Away

It was the same as always,
Paul opening the big, black lung
of it with that worried look
while the cats watched
from under the stove,
but when he closed
his eyes and began to sink
down between the straps
of his bib-overalls,
it was like he died. Except
the accordion was still breathing
a waltz between his hands,
except he called back
to us every so often
from wherever he was, shit.
Which meant everything
he had ever known
in his life up to that
moment, but this song.
Not some sock-drawer
music of getting a tune out
and then rummaging
for the chord to match,
but together, exactly like
he was breathing the thing
himself. No stomping
either, just Paul twisting
like he was after some deep
itch, only right then
he was starting to lift
out of his chair. Slowly
at first, like flypaper
in a small breeze, then
the whole enormous weight
of him hanging over the sink. God,
he was happy, and I
and the kids was laughing
and happy, when all
at once it come to me,
this is it. Paul is leaving
the old Barcolounger
stuck in second
position, and the tv on top
of the tv that don’t
work, and all my hand-paintings
of strawberries as if he had never
said this would be Strawberry Farm.
Hey! I said to him out in the yard
because he was already going
right over the roof
of the goat-shed, pumping
that song. What about you
and me? And Paul
just got farther and smaller
until he looked like a kid
opening paper dolls over
and over, or like
he was clapping slowly
at himself, and then
like he was opening up the wings
of some wild, black bird
he had made friends with
just before he disappeared
into the sky above the clouds
over all of Wisconsin.

-Wesley McNair

[Click image to view]

Dear Don,

Thanks–belated thanks–for your very encouraging
letter about my book.

I have not written because fate has filled my life
once again with activities which prevent regular
correspondence. I am holding down the house while
Diane prepares to go under the knife one more time
at Mary Hitchcock. Now, she has a ruptured disc.
It looks as if she will be more-or-less OK
after the operation and the ensuing period of recuperation,
but the recuperation will take 3-4 months, and
much of that time, she will be flat on her back.
She probably won’t be finished with this thing until
October.

Diane tells me that fate has also played a trick
on Jane. After the experience with my father-in-law
last fall, I can imagine how troublesome this period
is for her. Please wish her well for me.

I will try to keep you posted on Diane’s condition
after this new surgery. In the meantime, thanks
for your patience with such a rotten correspondent.
I think of you both often, however it may appear!

Love,

Wes

[Click image to view]

Dictated: 3 July, 1981
Typed: 7 July, 1981

2896 Newport
Ann Arbor, Michigan 48103

Wes McNair
Box 43
North Sutton, New Hampshire 03260

Dear Wes,

The stationery tells a lie. I am dictating this in a cellar in Ann
Arbor on July 3, and I will mail it out to Pacific Palisades, where an
old helper/typist/assistant of mine now lives, who will type it and mail
it from there, without me having read it. Don’t think this is too strange:
just be grateful I did not try my handwriting on you!

Well, I am so sorry about Diane. Everything will be all right I
realize—but that is a lot of time to wait. And in the meantime, I reckon
she has to miss the longed-for potting this summer. What a shame.

Yes, you know why we are out here. Jane was here two weeks without
me, but neither of us could stand that. She came back for a week, and
then we drove out here, and I believe that we will stay here until the
end. I loaded the car up with six months of work, etc., and we
will manage.

Do keep in touch. Danbury forwards mail so that it gets here in
about 48 hours. Good people. But you might as well write us here.
2896 Newport/Ann Arbor, Michigan 48103.

Love to you both as ever,

(Donald Hall)

Dictated but not read

[Click image to view]

Dear Don,

Enclosed, the money due you for
the Poetry publication.

Thanks to you and Joey.

Hope you and Jane are doing OK.

Love,

Wes

[Click image to view]

Dear Don,

Rising early in the morning seems to be the only
way of writing this letter to you–a letter I have
been “about to write” for a very long time. So I’ve
risen early, after staying up until nearly two
this morning covering a couch.

I do not recall if I told you that Diane and
I decided to have some renovations done on the
house during this summer. In fact, we made the
contract with our builders shortly before her accident.
Have you ever gone through a period of renovation?
I never guessed how time-consuming this thing
would be. It has of course gone on at the very
time Diane has been recuperating–terrible timing,
but the builders couldn’t work us into their schedule
later on, and we had to get certain things such as
roofing and re-clapboarding done before winter.
Also, we needed to have our porch repaired–
the boards were in woeful shape. We combined
that exterior work with renovation of the kitchen
and bathroom, and with other projects such as
recovering the couch. The builders have only just
left, so that the “other projects” can begin. Thus,

2/

our summer, which began with getting Diane back on
her feet and dealing with the builders, now concludes
with finishing touches on the renovation. I am bound
and determined to get all that stuff done before my
sabbatical officially begins so I can (finally)
settle down to long days of writing. At this point,
I am deeply frustrated, dying to get going on
poems!!

I am, however, also pleased with Diane’s recovery.
She threw away her crutches some weeks ago and
is now up and around with only occasional, and
minor relapses. Her physical therapist thinks her
recuperation is near-miraculous, and so do I.
A week ago, we learned that she has been granted
worker’s compensation. More good news!

I have managed to revise my book manuscript.
So I am totally free for new work, come two
weeks from now. I have decided to call it
The Faces of Americans in 1853. I have also
removed “The Poetic License” from the “Faces”
section of the book, so that the affirmative

[Written in left margin at last line, above:
Forgot to mention
I’ve also removed
the “dirty” poems
and “Beggars.”
Perhaps they are
poems for a
different book – ]

3/

connection with Rufus Porter (central figure in
the as-of-now last two poems in the section)
leads without irony to the last section and its
reconciliation with self and place. I have
retitled two of the sections (the last, for instance,
is called “Where I Live”), and I’ve added three
new poems, all of which you’ve seen.

This week, I begin to retype the book, so
you can see it sometime next week. I am
quite happy with the new form. It makes a lot
more sense, I think, as a “journey.” I hope you
like it, and I hope to God I can finally get
rid of it. I must move on from the book and
its needs to new work, new concerns!

I hope your own writing is going well. Two days
ago, I was visited by a friend who brought back
my copy of Kicking the Leaves, and I reread it.

It really is a wonderful book, far better than
any reviews have said, even though the reviews
were generally positive. The elegiac feeling is
so strong in it, and so elegantly expressed!
“Names of Horses,” “Flies,” “Black Faced Sheep,”

4/

poem after poem hits me over the head. Also, I returned
to the concluding pages of String Too Short To Be Saved,
this time noticing a description of the present which
reminds me of a poem you sent me in manuscript
called “The Intersection.” (The description I mean
is in the Epilogue, “Being Here.”) I have not yet
looked up the poem, but I would guess the description
will help me with it. Anyway, I like the (new) part
of the book very much–almost took it as an
epigraph for my book, but it wasn’t quite the right
thing.

Got the two copies of The Atlantic a few days ago,
and I was most thrilled. I do thank you and
Joey again for making that happen.

Please pass on regards to Jane. I hope she
has got beyond the Great Sorrow of awhile
back.

And I send this to Danbury, assuming
that by now you are back there. Best to you,
Jane, Wesley Wells, the animals and all
at Eagle Pond Farm and environs!

And Love,

Wes

[Click image to view]

Wes McNair
Box 43
North Sutton, NH 03260

Dear Wes,

Many thanks for the good long letter. We have been back
here for quite a while, but of course it is a strange time.
We stayed here, after coming back at the end of July, because
Jane’s father – we were told – would have to remain in the
hospital or a nursing home until he died. The cancer metastasized
to his brain. However, he has now taken a turn for the better,
and he may go home again. But he may be well enough so that we
do not have to be out there.

Jane just went out for another little visit, and when
she came back we had timed it so that Geoffrey Hill and Aileen
came into the airport at the same time, and they are up here
now, staying with us for nineteen days. We all work in the mornings,
and then play in the late afternoons and evenings. It is a good
thing.

We have had a tremendous amount of work done on the house,
and it is just horrible. All last summer was lost, when we tore
off the old bathroom and converted the old bedroom into a new
bathroom and hallway, and built a new bedroom on at the end.
Earlier, we have suffered through the replacement of two chimneys,
through lifting up the woodshed and putting new sills under it,
all sorts of things. Horrible. Now I don’t think we will have
to do any more major work – just roofing and painting from time
to time. I hope so. And the dozers like to get here at about
six a.m..

Very good about Diane’s recovery. Bad to have to recover…
but good to recover. Not only that but worker’s compensation.

I look forward to the new book manuscript. By the way, the
situation at Dial – Fran McCullough – is bleak, and I’m in the
process of looking for another publisher myself. Not that i
have anything to show right now to show. But will do. The revision
of the manuscript sounds good offhand. But I want to spend
some time with it.

I am writing every day, and now feel a little more encouraged
than I did a year ago. I have some newish poems, revised poems,
which seem better to me. The Intersection is very different,
I think I am finally getting those horizontals and verticals
straight.

Love to you both.

Don

[Click image to view]

Dear Wes,

Many thanks for the manuscript. Unfortunately,
I cannot read it right away. I am just about to
go off on an author-tour for Oxford, for the Anec-
dote book, and when I get back there will be a
great pile of things. I wish I could read it right
away, but things are rather frantic right now! As
soon as I can!

Best,

Don

[Click image to view]

Dear Don,

Enclosed, two revised poems. Hope
you like them.

I had to go ahead and have my book
mimeo’d, since the contests are calling
for manuscripts now. I’m therefore
going to have to assume you like
The Faces well enough–

Hope all is well at the Farm–

Love,

Wes

THE FAT PEOPLE OF THE OLD DAYS

Oddly, being so large
gave them a sense of possibility.

Women with huge upper arms
felt freer.

Children never stopped opening
the landscapes of flesh that grew
in their hands.

Their word for the thin ones
whose long faces seemed
part of their necks
was “chinless”.

Barking dogs and stray cats
were also called “chinless”.

No one knows when
the thin ones began
to seem beautiful,

when the fat people first worried
about weight.

A woman came to fear her knuckles
and elbows were sinking
into dimples.

A man believed his chin
which shook when he talked
was also speaking.

For many years
the fat life continued.

Each day inside strange houses
with wide doors
the fathers rose folding themselves
into their pants.

Each night the families dreamed of bones
hung forever in fat’s
locked closet.

–Wesley McNair

A DREAM OF HERMAN
for Diane

I was driving the old Dodge wagon
again, with Coke cans rolling
to the front at stop signs,
and you stroking the dash
every so often to thank the car
for not needing the spare tire
we hadn’t fixed. We were on a trip
that felt like going to your father’s camp, only
we never got there and didn’t care.
It was a beautiful day, just enough wind
coming into the back to make the kids
squint with pure pleasure
as it scribbled their hair, and your mother
patted them, saying what a nice ride it was
in the odd, small voice
she used only for your father.
It was then in the rear-view mirror I saw him,
wearing the brown cardigan he always wore
and putting on the shining bell
of his saxophone as if just back
from an intermission. You were smiling,
and suddenly I saw the reason
we were traveling together
and did not want to stop
was Herman, who just sat there
in the cargo space, breathing the scale
until the whole family leaned back
in their seats, and then he lifted his sax
and opened one more song as wide
and delicate as the floating trees.

–Wesley McNair

[Click image to view]

Dear Wes,

You have not heard from me because
I have not been here. We went back to ann Arbor.
Actually Jane has been there all but six weeks, since
early in June. And I have been there seven weeks, all
together. I just came back after twelve days. And
Reuel died just as I got back here, last Friday af-
ternoon. Thank heaven. End was peaceful. Jane
will be back on Tuesday. Maybe again we can start
to live the old life. Of course “normal life” is
nothing but how you live in the interstices among
disasters. And I will read the book! It must seem
strange to you that I have not been able to. But I
really have not been able to. I will be back with
you – and back among the living, for a while – as
soon as I can be. Love to you all,
Don

[Click image to view]

Wes McNair
North Sutton, NH

Dear Wes,

I like the book very much, and the order seems to me
sensible… Yet I may have notions about how to improve it.
I want to sit on it some more, dream on it some more. And
also, I would appreciate it if you would send me copies of
any of the near-misses. It seems to me that I remember a
few poems, recent ones, not the old “sexist” ones, that you
have left out. I am wondering if I can see a place for them,
and argue with you. But maybe I would not want to.

Why do you have so few lines on a page? Does one of the
contests demand that you only have so many lines on a page?
It has the curious affect of seeming to thin a rather solid
and bulky manuscript. Maybe that number of lines suggests
double-spacing.

I am going to wait, for further conversation, until I
hear from you.

Did I tell you in my last letter – I cannot remember whether
I wrote you a note a week ago or not…maybe I did…maybe this
week… – that Jane’s father died last Friday? We are relieved,
and it is wonderful to be back here together, and staying here.

We look forward to seeing you again, inspecting your
remodeling.

We had a wonderful time with Geoffrey Hill and Aileen.
And yes, it was invigorating, because nobody in the world is
so serious, and – when it comes to composition and publication –
so disinterested.

Love to you as ever,

Don

[Click image to view]

Dear Don,

Yes, I did just get word from you that Jane’s
father died. I suppose it is finally a relieving
thing for you both, since he had been hanging by
a thread for so long. I hope Jane is holding
together, and that you are. Diane and I both
wish you both well.

You wrote about my book at the very time I
was set to write you some good news about it.
Gerald Costanzo, of Carnegie Mellon Press,
sent me a very full letter about it, said
he found it “excellent” and did want to
publish it, though it was too late for this
year’s publication list. (My best information
was that manuscripts of poetry should be sent
to C.M. any time during the year. Apparently,
this is no longer so.) He asked me to send
it to him again in 1982, between September

2/

15 and October 15, and while he did not flat out
say he would publish it, he left me with the
impression that he would. The letter really did not
seem to be an elaborate “no.” Whatever it
may have been, it left me ‘up’ about the book’s
chances in the current form.

But I remain most concerned about your
feeling that the book might benefit from the addition
of other poems. If you finally feel I should
revise the thing, I will certainly consider doing
so. My main problem is that I went ahead
and ran copies of the present version (you’ll
remember I told you I had to do so because
contest time was coming up fast). But no
matter. I still have a bit of time for a
revision if I know of your ideas soon.

You ask if there was any “near-misses”
for inclusion in the book. I have not really
considered any poems for the revision

3/

other than the ones you found in it. Here are the
titles of the poems which seem to me appropriate
for some book, and which I’ve left out of this one:
(1) The Poetic License; (2) Beggars; (3) Trees That Pass Us
(4) A Dream of Herman; (5) The Fat People of the
Old Days; (6) Calling Harold; (7) The People Upstairs;
(8) The Fat Enter Heaven.

I left “(1)” out of the new book because it
broke the affirmative–unironically affirmative–
mood which the Porter poems establish in part 5,
and which moves into part 6. (I should say
also that the Porter poems establish a feeling about
region that I don’t want to intrude upon.)
I left “(2)” out because it has little to do with
the book as a whole, and little connection with
the poems of the last section in particular.
I suppose there might be some reason to include
one or two of the other poems–though probably
(5) and (8) wouldn’t fit. I can’t see much
justification for adding others, though. Maybe

4/

(3) could work in the affirmative last section; problem is,
it’s still another “region–viewed–from–car” poem,
and I have too many poems of that kind in the last
section already–three, in fact. Poem (6) might
be put into the last section, too; it is, after all,
a positive sort of verse. But it has nothing to do
with the new consideration of region (“new” after
the region of part 2)–and I do want this
business to dominate in Part 5.

For me, the book, whose epigraph promises
a “journey” that goes “backward in time”
“after a few wavers” begins with wavers,
or waverings, in the present, (sections 1 and 2),
goes backward (sections 3, 4, 5–hints in 2)
and returns to the present (Section 6). The
journey works on personal, regional, and national
levels. All of the poems must fit that movement,
and must relate to the more-or-less negative
beginning and positive ending of the book.

5/

That, in brief, is the way I see what I’ve done
with the poems of the book. Please let me know
where you may disagree! Also let me know
if you have any response to the revisions
I recently sent–particularly to “A Dream
of Herman.” Perhaps you didn’t get the
poems I mailed. I worry about that. Then again,
maybe I sent them more recently than I think.

Anyway, I look forward to your comments
about any of the above (new pen). And please
give our very best to Jane.

More later about your visit here!

Love,

Wes

[Click image to view]

Wes McNair
North Sutton, NH 03260

Dear Wes,

Jane is doing just fine. Of course after the relief –
even the high of the death of someone whom you have seen to
suffer the torture of the absolute damned…then there is time
for the grief to begin. But she shows every sign of taking it
all well. What is so important: she knows that she did the right
things. Oh, maybe some day there will come the day when they make
a computer which relieves us of being good. But I don’t look forward
to the day.

Jane got an NEA. The relief and pleasure for her, the
independent affirmation of her worth…you know something about
what that feels like! Very good for her.

I know Gerald Costanzo a little bit. He is a good man.
I’m delighted that he liked the book, and that
he wants to publish it… As you well know, nothing is firm until
you have the book in your hand, or see ten copies of it at once!
Still, I’m absolutely delighted.

I don’t think that one should ever save poems for a new
book. One should at any moment present the strongest possible
book. On the other hand, sometimes it is wise to leave poems out
of a book, not in order to save them, but in order to give a shape
to the book. I don’t know which you are doing, or whether you are
doing something else… I wondered if I might be able to help by
supplying an external opinion. I didn’t mean to leave you “most
concerned…”

You know, even after a book is taken, you are usually allowed
to revise it, to add to it, to subtract from it, to revise the poems
in the manuscript. Jane’s From Room to Room hardly resembled,
when it was printed, the manuscript that was accepted.

Your reasons for leaving out these eight poems… A lot
of them make sense. But sense isn’t always what matters. That is,
I think you may be worrying too much about “affirmative” and “negative.”
The quality and power of the poems is what matters, I think I might
argue. Do you have copies of these eight? Obviously I know them all –
but I don’t have copies of them handy. Could you make xeroxes of them
over at the English Dept., and send them to me, and let me play
with the manuscript as a whole, and make a (non-dogmatic) suggestion?

2/

I don’t think enough people pay attention to the book, [as shape,]
but pay attention just to making an anthology of poems; it is
possible that you pay too much attention to the book, and not
enough to the anthology of poems. But I don’t mean to tell you
so, in this letter – just to think that I might think about it,
and might wind up saying so…and if I did, that would be no
disaster, and if you disagreed with me, that would be no disaster
either…

I think it is important – and I’m sure you agree – to
put your best possible foot forward. Spend every penny you have.
Save nothing. In your first book.

I did not get a bunch of poems recently, except for the
book itself…maybe you sent them more recently than you think –
but I got the letter here, and have not yet received the revisions
of a dream of Herman or others.

Joey is about to submit some McNair poems to Donald Hall
for a special issue of Ploughshares. Probably the new revisions
are in order, in such a case.

Love as ever,

Don

[Click image to view]

Wes McNair
North Sutton, NH

Dear Wes,

I’m so sorry to take so long with you, all fall. You
know there have been all sorts of little things. And now I
have been interrupted by this and by that – but (sic) a poetry
reading, by having to go down and watch the Celtics practice
and talk with Kevin McHale…all sorts of things that just keep
me from concentrating.

I don’t feel the urgency that you feel in one sense: the
book is going to change every few months anyway. I know I may
be wrong. I don’t believe I’m wrong. I don’t think that you’ve
hurt yourself madly by leaving these poems out – but I do think [you]
hurt the book. Because I think that these [poems] include some of
the best things that you have written. I don’t know as you are
doing this, but let me counsel against something that some people
do from time to time: they hold back on new poems in order
to get started on the next book. It is always wise, I do believe,
to print your best poems now, and hold nothing back. And it is
wise to get rid of the weaker old ones, even when they are old
affections and old favorites for various reasons. Also, I would
say that the shape of the book, that you perceive, as you put it
together, is far less important than the individual poems. I do
believe in trying for a shapely book – but only after you make
the decision to include all the best poems and leave out all the
weaker ones.

The book will seem thicker, with more texture and tweed
to it, more grit, more content, and much more particularity, with
most of these poems added, and one or two of the old ones taken
out. Just how you do it – just how you make it a single whole –
I’m not sure. But also, I do not worry terribly about it.

I love the new one, by the way. I have one or two little things
to question about it. But very very good. The only one of these
poems – nine poems – that I would omit is The People upstairs. You
were having some doubts about it. I would put the whole thing back
in the drawer. Two years from now you may find it and it may be
the start of something else great. As I have come to see it, over
the last year or two, I have come to feel that it does not work.
It is too thin. It is too tenuous a music.

I tend I guess usually to like your thicker and grosser
things – like the absolutely wonderful Peaceable Kingdom, which
was the poem in your manuscript at the very beginning which took
my eye – and my eye has never left you since! The new one is an-
other one of your thick and gross things. (By “gross” I am using
an exaggeration, as opposed to the very ephemeral, very short-lined
things, of which The People Upstairs is an example.)

2/

Leaving out. I would leave out Elinore. Elinore has
never been a favorite of mine, and as you have written more
poems, and gotten better and better, Elinore has receded until
Elinore just waters the soup at this point. I think that you
could put Holding the Goat and When Superman Died in the previous
section. In general, I think maybe you have too many sections –
and all the blank pages and the short line pages and the short
pages combine to make the manuscript seem a lot thinner than it
genuinely is. I want you to look for, and even enjoy the idea
of greater bulkiness. The book feels thinner than you are. I
would think about omitting some of the poems in the second part –
but I think that in a bulkier book they would stand up better.
They wouldn’t have to carry so much on their own backs. I don’t
think that Fire in Enfield or Kuhre are up to the best of your work…
but I don’t think that they actively hurt you, unless they seem to
be padding out the thin book. Lines or paragraphs like “Kuhre/
just lurches/ off/into the tractors/ noise and/…” This is very
very thin, when the word “off” has to carry whole line on its
back. And there is, in this second section, really less vigor
than there is in much of your work. I like your work best when
it is thick and muscular or even fat, when it is vigorous in its
positive or negative way – I don’t really make any distinction
between the positive and the negative! I make a distinction between
the vigorous and the frail.

I would leave out The People Upstairs. I would leave out
Elinore. I would think about leaving out Kuhre or cutting things
down. I would think about jamming things together a little more…
And I would add these eight poems and I would have absolutely
no doubt about that. Of the eight, the most nearly weak one
is the Beggars. I meant to say, it is not quite up to the wonderful
other ones. Even Calling Harold, tiny as it is, is wonderful and
gritty.

I don’t think you ought to worry about affirmation. I think
that books work as well by contradiction as they do by consistency.
In a poetry reading, for instance, I like to put poems right up
against each other that are absolutely opposites, that contradict
each other in every way…you get energy from contradiction. And I
think you can do this in a book as well. You need not – as everybody
assumes – print like with like. I really don’t [like] printing by sections
anymore. Maybe I will do it again, as I used to do it, but in the
Kicking I did not do it.

I am writing in haste Monday morning, dictating that is,
and I must get up and drive down to Brookline almost immediately,
to watch the Celtics practice, then talk with Kevin McHale,
Cedric Maxwell, and Bill Fitch, and then drive two and a half hours
back… It’s a good life, really, and I’m not complaining…but
I mean to say I cannot answer your questions about Ploughshares
(and I probably won’t know for sure for a month or two) and the
revisions in the Herman…although I like the poem as I read it
right now.

3/

And I do love Mina Bell’s Cows…although I have a couple of
changes to suggest. When you have contemplated the changes and
possibly made anything that sounds sensible, could I have another
copy of it, for Joey that is?

Three things. First of all, totally trivial, shouldn’t it
be hay “chute”? In my copy you have “shute.” It seems to me there
is the word “shoot,” partly working by folk etymology, but that
the real word is “chute” from the French for “fall.” Maybe I’m
talking about a typo. Then in the last line, when I read it,
I hear it in a way that you didn’t type it… I absolutely hear,
every single time, “who never would come home.” And Ifind (sic) it very
hard to say it the other way.

Then I find something a little awkward in the second to last
line, it seems to center around the word “and,” which is idiomatic
enough, but not exactly grammatical, and a little strange…and
kind of slows me down every time. And I am not sure that “meaning”
is [the] exact word, or that it is the exact word if you come at it this
way. I mean to say, I might want you to say something like “ape,
ape, as if she called all three of them,/ her walleyed girls…”
I’m not suggesting this as the right way to do it…just that some-
how the word “meaning” seems like the author’s interpretation,
and therefore to insert the author into the poem suddenly. The
author having a window into her skull and her hidden “meanings.”

I love the poem. Love the book, also,

Don

[Click image to view]

Dear Don,

It was very good to see you and Jane last night. I’ve made up
my mind we will do it more often, barring conflicts in your
schedule or Jane’s, It does seem silly not to get together more
than once a year–a hazard, I guess, of living so near each other.

Enclosed is the revised manuscript I forgot to give you.
As you suggested, I made it “bulky”. I am very excited about the
result. What do you think? If I hear nothing negative from you,
I will have it run off next week.

I’ve also enclosed two poems for Joey, if you agree they’re
ready. I am awfully glad you like “Mina Bell’s Cows”
[Written in margin: and thanks for your suggestions!].
I was worried about that one. I like my poems, too, when they are “thick and
muscular and even fat,” as you put… “thick and gross.” (Your
description is so close, it gives me hope!) I was hoping for that
kind of thing in this poem, and I thought I was on the way with
the handling of the story, and with words like “Ape” and “walleyed”.
I’m glad you discover “grossness” in the poem.

I sometimes think of the energy and even the vulgarity of
country-Western music with poems like these–of getting that sort
of thing into a poem and refining just enough to make “literature”.
Early comics, say, or dirty jokes have a similar energy. Or Dear
Abby letters. “The tears have washed I love you from the blackboard
of my heart” and “I want to be a cowboy for Jesus in the Holy Ghost
Corral”–words like these have in them the yearning and sadness and
humor of the poetry I often want to write–this in spite of their
bathos, maybe even because of it.

Anyway, I hope you like book, poems and all. Let me know
when you can.

Love,

Wes

P.S.: How did the reading at Iowa go?

[Click image to view]

Dear Don,

If you think this poem is OK,
will you pass it on to Joey.

Gracias,
Wes

[Click image to view]

Wes McNair
North Sutton, NH 03260

Dear Wes,

I love the book in its gross state, and think it is a
great improvement, far more improvement than it ought to be.
I love the feel of it, and really think it makes a quantum
leap. I also like the three new poems, and they are already
gone.

Yes, it was lovely to see you two – and Lily and Wolf also.
And it would be good to see you more often. We are very laggard
this way, both of us inclined to go to bed at about the time we
would be having people over. But when we do see people – I mean
a few people! – we love it.

You are absolutely right about the energy and the vulgarity
of country-western, and this is something wonderful in your work,
and generally it is the best part of your work. Yes, and do not
forget “Drop kick me, Jesus, through the goal-posts of life/ ,
end over end, neither to the left nor the right.”

Iowa was a lot of fun. I saw quite a bit of Don Justice,
whom I admire. Also there was Hank Coulette, and Larry Levis
and Marcia Southwick… And the Justices had a lunch
party for me, and two other people had dinner parties for me,
and somebody else had a big party after the reading. I felt
feted…and I feel even better to be home.

Unfortunately my piece about Kevin McHale seems to be
doomed. Inside Sports is folding. I feel about fifty-two per
cent disappointed, because I had looked forward to writing it;
and forty-eight percent relieved, because I can do something
else instead.

Best as ever,

Don