McNair to Hall, August 3, 1984

[Click image to view]

Dear Don,

I like the content of your poem, The Baseball Players,
very much, and I especially like the form – the way lines
are broken, and (especially) the verbs you’ve chosen.
The poem, through these verbs, is active, yet arrests,
as you intend it to. How few poets today know the potential
of verbs!

Incidentally, my favorite verb in the poem is “established.”
Thanks for sending the photocopy. As it happens, I received
my July issue a couple of days before your letter arrived.

I enclose a poem which I hope you’ll like. Fine
to wait on the other poems. I will send you a retyped
batch, perhaps including this one, and some others, in
mid-September.

Best to you, Joey, Walter Blake Adams, et.al.,

Wes

P.S. Glad to have your positive response to The Name.

P.P.S. Got a call the other day from the Walt Whitman
Poetry Center, asking for a reading in November. The man
said he’d been “following my work,” and especially liked
the poems in the June Poetry.