| 28 July 1980
Wes McNair
Box 43
North Sutton, NH 03260
Dear Wes,
It is when Superman Died that I need. Thank you and
sorry.
Davison saw quite a few poems that Joey sent him,
and he rejected them. As it happens, he did not see the
three that you mentioned: Old Trees, The Fat Enter Heaven,
and Here on Television [sic]. (He would not like the last. But
he might like the first two.)
But they are at the moment out at another magazine.
I will send them to him when they come back, if they
come back. Earlier, although they were addressed to him –
and although Davison has bought poems by other of Joey’s
clients – the poems were rejected by Mary Jo Salter, who
reads for him, and therefore I am not even certain that he
reads them. But he may have done.
[Written in margin: Almost certain – or they would have had slips.]
Anyway, I will send those to him when they come back –
but I think it ought to be Joey who does the sending. I think
you ought to be consistent, or we ought to be – I don’t think
that some poems should come directly from you and others from
Joey Amaryllis.
I think that Calling Harold is finished, perfect, and
wonderful!
I think that The Fat People of the Old Days is a wonderful
idea, and ought to be terrific – but I think that it is
awkward and unfinished, and I think it would be a real mistake
to send it out now. That is, I think it will be better a
few months from now.
I don’t really believe in epigraphs very much. This
is a funny saying, but then it appears to be the saying of
the author’s child, and therefore he is saying “Look at what
a cute child I’ve got!” Often they are appeals to authority.
Sometimes they give off an appearance of diffidence. I really
don’t like this one, even though I like the line itself of
course. I don’t think it has much to do with the poem.
Then I think that the language of the poem is slack
here and there, but that the center of it is just pure gold.
I think that “driving some mad.” can be better, because
after all this is a cliche, to be driven mad, and nothing
imaginative about it. I love the notion of knuckles and
elbows sinking into dimples, but then I’m bewildered by the
prepositional clause that follows. It is obvious that it is
2/
dimples of fat. But then you say “of the fat.” And I am
lost. In fact, that generic “the fat,” detaching the phenomenon
from people, seems to me probably a mistake. I like the man.
I like the responsibility. I like the fathers folding it
in their pants – but I don’t like “through the cold which/
always was.” The expressions seems to me kind of glib there
and I realize it is a reference to the epigraph. But I don’t
need either. But There is nothing wrong with mentioning the
cold: I just think that this way of mentioning it seems
as if it intended to be clever.
I love the wide doors and the passing the potatoes!
But I don’t’ like the “long/vowels of wind…” because there
are no calories in vowels at all – unless you put them there.
I mean, if it were the “buttery/vowels…”…or something.
But “the long/ vowels of wind” just sounds poetical, kind
of a puff of poetical smoke. Then I don’t think it really
ends as well as it might. Partly I think this is the syntax.
The poem ends with two simple declarative sentences, short
lines, brief sentences… It seems kind of staccato or tight-
lipped, here at the end. I think it ought to get better!
And I do, indeed, think it is yet one more marvelous
poem – almost.
Love as ever,
Don |
