| 11 October 1982
Wesley McNair
Box 43
North Sutton, NH 03260
Dear Wes,
I don’t have a current price list for the American
Stationery Co., because I just [ordered] a whole bunch of
things. If you write a postcard to them at Peru, Indiana,
they will send you a catalogue. I have no doubt! Their
price has gone up enormously fantastically – and I suppose
it is still the cheapest thing anywhere around. I find the
postcards wonderfully cheap. But the price you pay, as it
were, is that you have no variety. The minute you start
paying for variety, you pay them more… The stuff that I
use comes in blue, for the small stationery…blue ink that
is…and black for the typewriter size… Blue for the postcards.
And exactly the same typeface… That is why it’s cheap.
I love the poems, and am starting to send them out.
I have one suggestion – the title of “The Ice Retreats
In Sutton” is cliché and dead metaphor. Military metaphor of
retreating. The poem is so much better than that! Why not
just say something like “After the Ice”?
Refresh my memory – so I can pass it on down street to
Joey… Do you have poems still coming out in Poetry? Do
you have a poem still coming out in the Atlantic?
Stay tuned for the latest bulletins. But don’t stay up.
“When Paul Flew Away” so beautiful… The grammar made me nervous
until I saw that it was consistent, and a form of speech…
Best as ever,
Don |
