| 3 September 1979
Wes McNair
Box 43
North Sutton, NH 03260
Dear Wes,
Here is a book by Jenny, which includes reference to earlier
books, and a famous anthologized poem. I know that I have been in
anthology with her and that poem, and I cannot find it. Maybe – doubltess [sic] –
it is somewhere in the Colby-Sawyer library. But then, it is somewhere
in my library too, and I cannot find it. Jenny is a bit younger than I
am, and has done a lot of BBC stuff and journalism of one sort and
another, as well as the books of poems which are of course what she takes
most seriously.
As far as I can tell, there would only be two possible days,
the 27th or the 28th of September. She is visiting with her daughter,
and has a lot of things planned ahead of course, and I don’t think
that she could stay around or come back.
Let me know just as soon as you can, please.
Well, I am delighted about Fran’s initial response also, and I
know that I must not be “not too hopeful” and I hope to heaven you
know it also. Chances are, as ever, that we will not get what we both
want. But I hope that we do!
Don’t be disturbed about me feeling that things do not work. I
cannot remember ever having been wholly satisfied with anything by
anybody I know. [Written in margin: Or by me.]
I don’t feel more comfortable about that image with the o’s,
because I don’t know where the telephone linesman came from. I think
they have to be in there, cutting and making this unnatural, artificial,
man-made o. I was trying to imagine a natural one, which is what I felt
you had me imagining.
I don’t know whether the line would stress the car more than the
driving…I wasn’t particularly happy about the line that I suggested.
But I felt the lack of the bone, with the verb missing. I don’t think
that an incomplete sentence is really unusual syntax exactly. It didn’t
bother me as being peculiar or unusual or eccentric. It bothered me
as seeming somehow incomplete – I mean not just incomplete in the way
that it literally was. As lacking some essential organism to make it
thoroughly alive and vigorous.
I look forward to the two longish poems, heaven knows, and everything
else. Also to read the new order. I suspect that I will like it.
But it is hard for me to know without actually reading through it again
In the new way.
I told Joey and he says cool.
Love as ever,
Don |
