The Writing Rhythm

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Donald Hall has relentlessly taken
Old Trees, Calling Harold, and The Fat People
of the Old Days for Ploughshares. He desperately
wanted Mina Bell, but I would not let him have it
… (The New Yorker ridiculously declined to have
It.)

Best as ever,

Joey

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Dear Don,

I heard from Joey that you have chosen three of my poems for
Ploughshares. I’m very glad. I’m also pleased that he thought
“Mina Bell’s Cows” good enough to submit to the New Yorker, even
though it was rejected.

What’s happening here in Sutton is a lot of writing and re-writing.
I thought for sure I’d have two two-page poems for your review
by the end of January, but I put them both away about a week ago,
each about finished. I’m now working on two other poems. Maybe
I’m beginning to work on batches, as you seem to. Anyway, I do
want you to know that I’m struggling each and every day on poems,
and that I’m excited by the writing I’m doing, even though I’m not
yet ready to send samples.

Incidentally, I have been doing some extra teaching—not enough
that it interferes with my writing, but enough to keep food on the table
while I’m on sabbatical. I’m working for the School for Lifelong
Learning, UNH’s continuing education school, which has branches
within commuting distance. Later on, the connection with SLL will
probably help me to put Sean through college, if we’re still here.

My manuscript, famous in its various revisions among
the readers for all the major contests, is now being read once
again by Princeton, The National Poetry Contest, Pittsburgh
and Associated Writing Programs. I have my fingers crossed
for Princeton, the first notification I must face. Rejection—
or acceptance—happens at the end of this month.

2/

Night before last, I read for the Baptist Monday Nights (NL),
mostly older folks, some of whom no doubt expected my poetry to rhyme.
They did like the poems, nevertheless—their engaged and pleased
expressions during the reading were unmistakable. Getting people who
don’t really follow poetry involved in a reading is an especially
gratifying thing for me, since I do feel that poetry should have a
broad appeal.

That makes me think to ask you what is probably a naïve
question. Why isn’t there a book club that features regular selections
of contemporary poetry? Or a book club that features poetry only?
Don’t you think that people would buy contemporary verse if there were
such outlets for it? Probably it’s because I now see the possibility
of publishing a book myself, but I’m currently very down about
how little poetry is read today. I can’t believe the limited number
of readers is only the fault of poets, especially since there’s such
interest in poetry writing in college, and afterward, through workshops
of one kind or another. If individual presses can’t afford to
advertise for their poetry, perhaps a co-operative of some kind
would work—a book club sponsored by the presses, maybe…
I assume others have thought of such things and discarded
their thoughts—but why?

Speaking of books, I’d very much life to get a copy of
your Hobart and William Smith collection of recent essays.
Do you have a copy I could buy? I just bought two very interesting
books—The Private Life and Satan Says. Do you like them, too?
What do you think of Sharon Olds?

Just got word that Diane is leaving for shopping & mail…
so I’ll cut this off here. I hope your trip with Jane to England
went well—and that your return to Eagle Pond Farm has been good, too.

Lots of love to both of you,

Wes

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Wes McNair
Box 43
North Sutton, NH 03260

Dear Wes,

Good to hear from you, and I’m glad you got Joey’s postcard.
(Basically some place or other I must be Celtic, with all this
dual personality stuff. Next I will be Fiona McLeod.)

I don’t think you are good enough to submit to the New Yorker.
I think you are too good to submit to the New Yorker. With this
most recent issue, full of Howard Moss again, I concocted a
bitchy definition of “disinterestedness”: When a poetry editor
prints great quantities of himself, on the basis of quality
alone, although he realizes that he will be criticized for it…

Good to hear about the writing and re-writing. Me too.
Sometimes I think I carry it a bit too far! You know, I have not
published a satisfactory poem – virtually not a poem – since Kicking.
One little one which will stay as it is – but which I probably will
never reprint in a book because it is too damned little. And
Ploughshares is coming out with one, the Joyce Peseroff issue –
but I am changing it in the meantime. And last week New Republic
came out with one, and I had already changed it, and now I’m changing
it some more – and that little thing is only a few lines long
anyway.

But I am working on long and ambitious things, and maybe
eventually they will not only be publishable but Immortal…
And after all, that is the only thing worth thinking about!

Well, I am both pleased and sorry about the extra teaching,
you will understand. I’m glad it is there if you need it; I am
sorry that you need it, but my goodness the economy is terrible,
and going to get worse. Reagan is worse than Nixon any day. The
worst president we have ever had, and the country is going to be
in the worst shape, quite possibly.

Lately, I have been hearing from Gerry Costanzo – and not
about you. I have written him twice about you, and he has not
mentioned it in reply, and I am going to shut up – because I don’t
want him to get the sense that he is being pushed. However, I don’t
think it all bad that he is being in touch with me, because appar-
ently he wants to write about me – he asked me, and he sounded
serious, if he could be my authorized biographer. Well, I don’t
want one of those! But I think he means it about writing about me.
And I am going down to his place again this spring, to read poems
and give a talk. I am hoping that he will do you, next year,
because I think he does good books, and I think he makes them
attractive. He doesn’t do all good books – nobody does that –
but he has done a couple of good ones lately, and I really think
he’s one of the better small places.

2/

But in the meantime if one of these other things comes
through…I will be delighted of course.

I think that Max Kumin is judging the Princeton things
right now. Dan Hoffman is through.

I saw that you read for the Monday Night. Good for you.

Back in the forties there was a book club for poetry, which
didn’t last very long. I could tell you about it, but it was
doomed. In England, there has been one for years and years and
years, the Poetry Book Society. It comes out of the Arts Council
which is government sponsored. The only way it could happen in
this country is if the Poets and Writers (the Coda people) or the
Academy of American Poets did it. They in a sense have an annual
book, with the Lamont, which they distribute… I think there is
one other book that they annually distribute.

It would be a losing proposition I suppose. The book club
in the forties had five or six members, nation-wide. I was one
of them. Once I met one of the directors, and asked him. Amazing.
But that was a little thing run out of one quarterly magazine…

I seriously think that a national book club would not have
more than two or three hundred members. And everybody would be
quitting all the time, because everybody would get pissed off
about which books were selected.

I’d be all for it anyway of course. But I wouldn’t want
to do it myself.

In a sense, any one person could probably do it, because
it would never get very big. And so if anybody had about $10,000
to lose, I think they could do it, and do it single-handed – maybe
hiring a high school student to stitch up book bags four times a year.
(I suspect it would have to be quarterly rather than monthly.)
Ten thousand dollars would go for ads to start it off, and the
“profits” on the ongoing club would pay for one or two ads or
mailings a year thereafter…but I doubt very much if the initial
ten thousand would ever be earned back.

Want to try it?

Who wrote The Private Life? The title does not ring a bell.
I don’t like Sharon Olds, or not much anyway. I like Linda Gregg –
And I like one or two other people here or there, for that matter!

We had a wonderful time to England. We ate sausages and read
French novels. It was cold, there was a train strike – and it was
lovely. We went to the theater a lot, to the opera once, we looked
at some pictures in museums, some sculpture… We saw Geoffrey Hill.
I saw John Fowles and interviewed him for Esquire. But mostly we
just took it very very easy. And I return here and am delirious
with joy at the old fourteen hour day!

Love as ever, to all of you,

Don

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Dear Don,

Thanks for your good, long letter.

It’s discouraging to learn about the poetry book club
that failed. But then so much one learns about poetry and its
readership is discouraging! The retreat of the trade houses
from poetry; the government’s retreat from funding small presses,
magazines and individual poets; the competition for places
in the poetry series of a few academic presses–which in
many ways strengthen the walls between the poet and a
general readership. It’s terrible.

Having just gotten word that another of the academic presses
has turned me down for the second time, I am particularly
down about all these things. Over the weekend, Princeton
sent me a form rejection (not the “finalist” letter of last
year) containing its elaborate “no.” Now that I’m in
my fourth year of submitting this manuscript of mine,
I have reason to be troubled. I don’t see how I can make
the thing much better than it is. Yet I feel the old,
annual cycle of rejections starting up once again. Harper
[Written in margin: Solotaroff finally wrote back,
saying he’d “be glad to” look at my book.]
& Row, The National Poetry Series and Pittsburgh are left.
I hope I’m wrong about just one of them, but the hope
at this point is rather thin.
[Written in margin: Forgot Assoc. Writing Programs].

I’m glad to have you as a witness with Costanzo.
I’m also glad that he wants to write about you. You have

2/

written better, larger than most poets of your generation;
you have worked as hard as anyone to establish respect
for the fathers of modern poetry–and awareness of
contemporary poets on each side of the Atlantic. Your sense
of the absolute importance of poetry and the vocation of the poet
has changed many others, I am sure, as deeply as it
has changed me. Together, your books, articles and letters
represent one of the forces keeping literature alive today.
I am glad Costanzo has seen the need for a biography,
and I hope your relationship with him works out.

You ask about The Private Life Lisel Mueller
wrote it. I liked her work in a recent issue of Poetry,
and so I bought that book, her second. Also bought, among
other things, The Situation of Poetry, which I liked very
much, in spite of the academic language. I am sending
now for Pinsky’s An Explanation of America, which I’ve
read about long since and never gotten around to buying.

And I have liked a couple of articles you have
written–the one in the current Poetry, and, especially,
the raking of Lathom (sic) in The Atlantic (the only articles
by you I’ve seen recently). I continue to be interested
in the Hobart & William Smith book, which I’d
gladly purchase if you have an extra copy. If you
don’t, I’ll send for one. (I mentioned this in an earlier
letter and am not sure if you noticed…)

3/

Because I like so much the “long and ambitious things”
of Kicking the Leaves, I look forward to your printing the
long and ambitious things you are now struggling with.
I am sure the wait will be worth it.

In the meantime, good that England went well, and
good that you are both back to re-writing!

Blessings,

Wes

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Wes McNair
Box 43
North Sutton, NH 03260

Dear Wes,

Good to have your letter. I am home for four whole
days now. Amazing. Then I am gone for all but thirty-six
hours of the next two weeks. I don’t like that.

I just read at the college of Bruce Guernsey who was
selected last summer as one of the two manuscripts taken by
Pitt – out of more than 1400 submitted. When the figures are
like that, the lottery-likeness is inevitable. But then, so
was the NEA! The good lightning bolts drop out of the blue
just like the bad ones.

Old Costanzo is in funding trouble for his press, as
he told me not in relationship to your manuscript, but just
in general.

Glad you are going to try Solotaroff.

I had forgotten Lisel’s title. I do like a lot of her
work. And I do like Pinsky. I am about to see him again, and
I miss him, now that he has gone out to the west coast. I’m not
sure you are going to like An Explanation very much. It is very
discursive indeed. The opening and closing lyrics are quite
beautiful. He can do it when he wants to.

I will get you that To Keep Moving if you keep reminding
me! It seems silly to go to all the postage when we are nearby.
I would like to think that I will stop by at Colby-Sawyer and
leave it for you…if you are over our way, why don’t you try
driving in the yard.

I am reading a lot of these long and ambitious things on
the road, and some of them are sounding pretty good to me, and
to my listeners. I have hopes.

Best as ever,

Don

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Thanks for your letter. I trust you are now back
home again to enjoy window-views of the snow
that fell while you were away.

I send a poem which I do hope is finished,
but which may not be. Please look it over and
if you find it OK, give it to your right hand,
Joey.

If you find it wanting [even if not], please let me know!

Love,

Wes

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Dear Mr. Amaryllis,

Thanks for letting us see the new
poems by Mr. McNair. We especially like
“Small Towns Are Passing”
and are glad to keep that one for
POETRY.

Best wishes,

John F. Nims

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Wes McNair
Box 43
North Sutton, NH 03260

Dear Wes,

Well, you just cannot lose at Poetry. Only one this time,
but you cannot knock it.

And on the other hand, I am not happy with the father poem.
I think the end is just beautiful, and you have to start nearer
it probably. But there are all sorts of strange awkwardnesses
and inadequacies I think. You say “had you gone/ over and over,”
so that it is ambiguous, as if the act of leaving took place over
and over again, whereas I believe you mean the asking about it…
And then when you say “some world beyond my reach” you have two
clichés together, the world, and the physical reading business…
two dead metaphors, the commentary of “the worst/ of it…” and
then other things, all along in there in the middle, and I don’t
think that your language is much good, it seems slack… More
thinking! More feeling…more setting aside. Sorry about that.
But I really feel strongly about it, and I feel strongly that
you will feel it too. You are very rarely ever slack – so I
suspect that this poem is just emotionally a tough one.

Best as ever,

Don

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Dear Don,

I am sorry you do not care for the father poem
in its present state, but I remain grateful for
your honest review of my poems. I will put it away
for a while. It’s much too close for me to come
to terms with any of your comments at this point.

I enclose $3.50 for the HM publication (payment
was $35), and I thank you not only for seeing
that one through but for passing the “Small Towns”
poem on to Joey for Poetry. The hit there lifts
my spirits considerably!

I’m also sending you, as you see, two new
poems, which I hope you like. Please let me know
when you can what you think.

Best to you and Jane, and love,

Wes

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Dear Wes,

These seem to me further along than the Father-Poem, but
I think that maybe they would profit by being kept around for
a while longer. I am taking so long, I am being so “patient”
(if that is really the name of it) that maybe I urge it too much
on others. When I wait, I am glad that I have waited… It is
not only that you change a word… Sometimes you see something
about a poem that is entirely new – like a way for it to mean or
go that you never even saw before. And I am getting up to two
hundred drafts these days! Maybe that’s a bit ridiculous…

I like both of these. “Feet” is a wonderful idea. I have
two kinds of objections, one of which is just little things about
single words, pacings, connections… Then there is the possible
area of implications not exploited enough, or not clear enough…

You will see that I am messing with things on the first page…
I feel that it is ambiguous when we do not have “that” in the
third stanza… I find “are” a boring word, and wonder if some-
thing like “lay” or a more interesting verb might be possible.

Then I find “to stand/ the body/ can take it…” The
transitive “stand” slows me down. Maybe it should… I’m not
sure it should.

But then I am bothered very much by the metaphor of “flight.”
Probably it is “the whole point,” as we say. But the feet have been
very much attached to the earth, and that has been the characteristic
of them, the lowliness of them, the footageness of them, as opposed
to voices that go hundreds of miles through machines… And then
they take it in its “low/mysterious flight…” and I really don’t
know what they’re doing or why it is the feet that would do that.
Although we can use the word “flight” meaning fast movement, it
surely means up in the air also, whatever we want. This seems
a low orbit…but why? How? And isn’t “maybe” “mysterious” a
cop-out?

Then with My Brother. I don’t understand the concept of
“taken/ into the doors.” Inside doors? Into the room which is
behind the doors? Banging against the doors, breaking your nose?
I think that it ends very well. I think that it is almost all here.
That image is disturbing to me though, because of its physical
confusion. Physical confusions perhaps in both poems.

Love as ever,
Don

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Dear Don,

Sometimes I respond to your letters in my head
and forget I have not responded on paper.

Thanks for the time you took with the
poems. Again, I will have to put them (with
your letter) up for awhile to see what I
agree with and what I don’t.

But it is good to have your straight out
commentary, as always, and I thank you
for that especially.

Love,

Wes

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Dear Joseph Amaryllis:

We’ll be happy to publish Wesley McNair’s “Mina Bell’s Cows.”
Thanks for sending it.

Yours,
Peter Davison
Poetry Editor

April 19, 1982

Mr. Joseph Amaryllis
Box 71
Potter Place, New Hampshire 03265

2/

For your contribution to the Atlantic Monthly
entitled “Mina Bell’s Cows”,
we enclose a check for $50.00.

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 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
Lawrence J. Murphy
VICE PRESIDENT FINANCE & ADMINSTRATION

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Joseph Amaryllis
Box 71
Potter Place, NH 03265

Dear Joseph Amaryllis:

I am enclosing the author’s proof of
Wesley McNair’s “Mina Bell’s Cows.” Any
necessary changes should be indicated, and
the proofs returned to me as soon as possible.
Thank you.

Yours truly,

Rhoda Gubernick

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Dear Don,

Needless to say, I am thrilled to be
appearing in the Atlantic once again.

Good old Joey. Just when I am feeling
down about my poems, he gives me the steel
to continue.

It’s spring!

Thanks to you both.

Love,

Wes

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Wes McNair

Well, we were very pleased also. You are
one of Joey’s poets who hits nothing but the
top places. I am so frustrated about The New
Yorker – but it will happen.

Best as ever,

Don

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As you see, I have enclosed three poems, two
of which you have seen. I have revised the “Feet”
poem, but I did not change its ending. I may be
wrong not to change it–may well be–but I do
think it works at this point, having let the thing
rest awhile. The “Brother” poem has been revised also
so it should be less confusing.

If you like “The Before People”, please pass it on
to Joey.

Other poems–so many others–are in progress,
but they resist all my best pushing and prodding
thus far. I will send more when I can.

Best,

Wes

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Wes McNair
Box 43
North Sutton, NH 03260

Dear Wes,

Good to hear, good to have the poems.

I spoke to Joey the other day, and he is obsessed with
sending your stuff to the New Yorker. And the New Yorker is
shut down from now until Labor Day. And on Labor Day, they
get four thousand poems a day for two weeks, and nothing gets
in except the contract-folks… Therefore it is probably
best not to send the poems to the New Yorker from now until
Columbus Day.

So: with new poems, should we just hold back until
then, and then start with the New Yorker at that time? I am
inclined to say so. With new poems. Save them up. If there
are eight or twelve by that time, then I would send them to
the New Yorker in three groups or two. And then go on down
the line. But if you would rather start with other magazines,
we can do that. Poetry is closed until the fall too – but
then you do have some things coming out there.

“The Before People” really bothers me visually, the
way it looks on the page – and I don’t think that the Fallacy
of Imitative Form can be invoked, even if it were not a fallacy.

I like it. I think it’s ready. Shall we save it?

I cannot remember whether this was there before, whether
it bothered me or not…it almost seems as if I remember it:
“…suddenly, the feet/ are for…” That is, I get “the feet”
as the object, direct object, of “discovering,” and then when
I get to the next line I discover that the “that” has been omitted.
But if I had “that feet” would I be tempted to think of an eccentric
demonstrative? I like it a lot, and maybe the end is just fine.
I worry about this little patch… Let me know what you think.

And I like “My Brother” very much, but myself think that
“heartbreakingly” is a mistake. Did I see that before? Did I
miss it before? Was it there before? I am bothered by its
triteness, by its continual use on soap operas and sports pages,
by the dead metaphor… I think that some people would like it
just because it is corny, because that would mean that you were
taking a chance, being vulnerable…and today I think they are
wrong.

2/

Joey says: if you don’t want to wait, he will be happy
to send these to APR. (Actually, he will ask Don to send those
to APR, if you want.)

Love from both of us, and Jane sends her love too,

Don

(Note: Don’s markings on the poems are in bold and brackets)

FEET

At first the crawling
child makes his whole body
a foot.

One day, dazed
as if by memory,
he pulls himself up[,]

discovering, suddenly,
[that] the feet
are for carrying

the hands. He is so
happy he cannot stop
taking the hands

from room to room,
learning the names
of everything he wants.

This lasts for many years
until the feet,
no longer fast enough,

[are] forgotten,
say, in the office
under a desk. Above them

the rest of the body,
where the child
has come to live,

is sending its voice
hundreds of miles
through a machine.

Left to themselves
over and over,
the feet sleep,

awakening
one day
beyond the dead

conversation of the mind
and the hands.
Mute in their shoes,

your shoes
and mine,
they wait,

longing only to stand
the body
and take it

into its low,
mysterious flight [—?]
along the earth.

MY BROTHER IN THE REVOLVING DOORS

I see you in Chicago twenty-five years ago,
a tall kid, heartbreakingly sure of yourself.
You are just arriving from the goat farm
to meet your father, the god you invented
after he left you in childhood.
It is the sunniest day you can remember,
and you walk the wide streets
of the city by his side in the dream
you have had all along of this moment,
except you are starting to see how different
he looks and how he does not care
about this in the same way that you do.
Which is when it happens, you are taken
into the doors. Just like that,
you are closed off from him, walking
in the weightlessness of your own fear.
And when you push your door, it leads
to other retreating doors, and again
and again it takes you to the voice of him,
the fat man standing outside who has nothing,
suddenly, to do with your father and shouts
let go! let go! and you cannot let go.

-Wesley McNair

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Dear Don,

All praise to Joey’s obsessions! I, too, would like to see
one of my poems end up there and would therefore as soon wait
with the poems I sent you, adding others through the summer
toward October.

Between now and then, I will have a chance to mull
over your comments about the poems. I think you are right
about the “heartbreakingly” of the brother poem. Actually, I
worry about clichés while working on many of my poems–
the consequence some of the time of working on “popular”
subject matter or trying to speak in an “unliterary”,
a “real” voice. Any suggestions about what might
replace the above word?

About “The Longing of the Feet”: You did
remark about that stanza

discovering,
suddenly, the feet
are for carrying….

Originally, the stanza looked this way (over)

2/

discovering, suddenly,
the feet
are for carrying

I changed the lineation so the sentence could be felt more
as a unit, and so I could leave out the “that” which
you thought might clarify the meaning of the stanza.
I decided against a “that” because I wanted the sense
of discovering “feet” and “are for carrying” more or
less at once. The word “that”, I felt, would restrict
the stanza to one discovery. Thus, my revision (again,
with notes):

[enjambment,
picking up new
meanings, lending
to surprise
“hands” of next
stanza]
discovering, suddenly, the feet are for carrying

You may be right about the shape of “The Before People.”
I will have time to think about that, too.

Anyway, I am very glad you like these poems.
You have made my week.

My manuscript bombed at all presses except
Pittsburgh, from which I will receive word by June’s end.

Thanks for your letter

Love,

Wes

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Dear Don,

Will you please let me know
if you think the enclosed is
ready?

Thanks–

Wes

WHEN PAUL FLEW AWAY

It was the same as always,
Paul opening the big, black lung
of it 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 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 never
said this would be Strawberry Farm.
Hey! I said 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
unfolding 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.

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Wes McNair
Box 43
Sutton, New Hampshire 03260

Dear Wes,

We have agreed, then, on waiting. I don’t have any suggestions
about that word in the brother poem. Not off-hand.

At the moment I still feel that leaving out “that” introduces a
hesitation/ambiguity that has no purpose, that only puts an impediment—
like a pebble in a shoe…but if you feel strongly you must leave it as
you wish.

One day the manuscript will not bomb!

Love as ever,

Don

[P.S. I like Paul very much!
In the fall, please send flat copies on
thick paper for Joey’s Autumn Campaign.]

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Dear Don,

I have a feeling I left a word out
of that poem, “When Paul Flew Away.”

On page 2, it’s “the whole enormous weight/
of him hanging over the sink.”

Please insert that word, if necessary–

Thanks–

Wes

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Dear Don,

Heard you tonight at Colby and wanted to tell you
I enjoyed your anecdotes, but you were surrounded
and busy autographing, so I tell you this way.

I also enjoyed the nice little volume of Ploughshares
you edited and am glad Joey was willing to give you
poems for it. The cover is great, and I liked
several of your choices.

No word yet from Pittsburgh, though word
is overdue. While I can’t help expecting the
worst, though I admit to peeking through
hands as I hold them over my eyes
in case something wonderful happens. Incidentally,
I’m working now on several things, but completion
of each still eludes me. I will try to send
more poems for “the fall campaign.”

Now I have an anecdote for you. A
student from UNH who is taking a summer
course on critical analysis from me at

2/

Merrimack Valley College told me the other night
that he is trying to get an English minor–may
even get a major in English–mainly because
of a book that got him interested in poetry,
which he had never considered seriously before.
The title of the book is Kicking the Leaves.

Take this letter out the next time you have
any doubts about your work!

Love,

Wes

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Wes McNair

Dear Wes and Diane,

Thanks for writing, Wes. I heard you were
there but I didn’t see you. Glad that Ploughshares
arrived. Good luck with Pittsburgh…and with
Carnegie-Mellon in that same city. Heaven knows I
am pleased with your anecdote from the University
of New Hampshire!

Love as ever,

Don

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Dear Don,

Thanks for the card about Pittsburgh, Carnegie-Mellon
and the anecdote.

The bad news I expected, but didn’t really, came
yesterday from Pittsburgh. “Now there was one: Carnegie-
Mellon.

You’ll remember I told you Costanzo wrote me
a good letter about my book last October–thus, after
I had unwittingly mailed my manuscript to him
too late for last year’s competition. Since he was
writing his letter before the last revision of the book,
I think I have an outside chance there for more
than a “yes rejection”–the note of praise saying
no, of the sort I received from Pitt yesterday.

I did send Costanzo the last revision, by the
way, saying that I knew he couldn’t do anything about
it at that time, but that I wanted him to
see it in its new form. (No answer from him

2/

about that.)

If Constanzo doesn’t take it, I guess I will
just stop sending it to the places I’ve been trying
for the past four years. More of the same would
be all that would happen.

Which brings me to my question: Are there
alternatives beyond the ones I’ve been trying?
I am reluctant still to send the thing to small
presses because such publication often does not
lead to exposure, jobs or grants for new writing
time. But there’s always Greywolf, I suppose
(assuming they’d be interested), and maybe
there are others…

Well. Please let know about this whenever
you can. In the meantime, I will continue
to write. I hope you and Jane will too!

Love,

Wes

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Wes McNair

Dear Wes,

Too bad about Pittsburgh. I think I wrote
you about Carnegie-Mellon, that Costanzo sincerely
likes the book very much; that his funding is temp-
orarily down, and he may do no more books for twelve
months… Don’t expect anything from there. We go
to the opening of my play tonight in Peterborough,
on Friday we fly to England, back on September 4th…
Maybe Joey should take over? Let us talk in Sept-
ember.

Love,

Don

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Dear Don,

Thank you for your card. After receiving it and
learning about your up-coming play, I promptly
forgot about going to see it. Which pained me
because I very much wanted to see it. It is not
easy, living in this head.

I appreciate your suggestion about getting
together with you and Joey to try to plan
strategy for the Most Famous Little-Known
Unpublished Manuscript of Our Times.

Whenever you say (before school starts up),
I’ll be there.

Love,

Wes

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Wes McNair

Dear Wes,

If you get this in time, maybe come over
Friday afternoon the 10th? If not then, Friday
afternoon the 17th? When does school begin anyway?

Best as ever,

Don

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Dear Don,

Here is the copy of the manuscript
which you requested.

Do you think I ought to send Costanzo
the book anyway, since he asked me to
mail it to him between Sept 15 and
Oct 15 this year?

Good to see you, looking so fit, and
Jane–what Emily Dickinson would call
“home faces.”

Love,

Wes

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Dear Don,

Are you too deeply occupied to say if my
verse is alive?

I will be sending poems for the fall campaign
on “flat paper”, as you requested, soon. Perhaps
they will include the enclosed verses, in some form.

In case you did not open the package containing
my manuscript and see my note in it, I
ask again the question the note asks: Should
I send a copy of the book to Costanzo at
Carnegie-Mellon, or is it a sure thing he
won’t consider publishing it now?

My visit to Eagle Pond Farm helped! I’m
writing!

Will let you know more soon about that dinner–

Love,

Wes

BIG CARS

Ten years later they arrive
on the thruway, pulling their winged
fenders and smiling a lane wide–
big cars, old floats that took a wrong
corner somewhere and lost
the American Dream parade. Around them

the strange, grilleless
cars of their future
hum at their tires–tiny aliens
of a planet out of gas.

To think of their long trip
just beginning–the irrepressible fuel
rising everywhere into their tanks!
Armrests unfolding out of seats,
out of the armrests, ashtrays! Maps
falling open to the new roads

which led them, finally, here
to the right lands of America,
suddenly the antiques of optimism
nobody wants or understands
except the poor. Or dictators

cruising the boulevards of some country
where the poor do not have cars
and run behind until it seems
that they themselves are riding
on soft shocks, under a sun roof
toward the great plenty of the New World.

MUTE

Once, on the last ice-cutting,
the son broke through the surface
of their solid world,
coming to rest among the folded
legs of horses. Listening for him

after all her tears was perhaps
what drew the mother
into that silence. Long afternoons
she sat with her daughter,
speaking in the sign they invented
together, going deaf to the world.

How, exactly, did they touch
their mouths? What was the thought
of the old man on the porch,
growing so drunk by nightfall
he could not hear
mosquitoes in his ears.

There is so much no one remembers
about the farm where sound,
even the bawling of the unmilked cows,
came to a stop. Even the name

that neighbors must have spoken
passing by in twilight, on their way
to forgetting it forever.

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Wes McNair

Dear Wes,

Sorry I didn’t answer your question about
Costanzo. (I like the new poems a lot, and will
probably have some questions – but a head-cold
keeps me from clarity at the moment. More later.)
Yes on the Costanzo. I am only preparing you
accurately – not acting as his messenger… And
it is always possible that something has changed.

Best as ever,

Don

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Wes McNair
Box 42
North Sutton, NH 03260

Dear Wes,

You do have a wonderful gift for finding the dream right
in the dark center of popular things, like the Big Cars.

I like both of these poems. Possibly both of them could
be touched up a bit. Let me ruminate and wander….

I think that “…the American Dream parade” is almost
too much, and it might be too much… You know, “smiling a
lane wide” is almost over the line into pop culture itself,
not just about it but it… Then comes the next: Is it
ironic or is it celebratory almost? True questions, not
disguised statements.

I don’t understand “their future.” That is, I understand
it as the future or our future…and since you say their future,
which is a little strange, I take it you mean something different.
Why is the future belonging to these old cars? As I understand
it, the meaning is fine…but the expression is a little strange.
However, I take it that I am not really understanding what you
intend.

Then I don’t really like the syntax of “maps/falling open…”
through “suddenly the antiques of optimism…” I think it is
very elliptical and hard to follow, and I don’t see that its
difficulty has any function. I would think that it might be
more parallel and easy to (sic) end”America!” parallel to the previous
sentence-fragment, and then make a new sentence, although the
line would be a bit long. “Suddenly they are the antiques of
optimism…” except maybe that isn’t just right. I really
think it might be clarified in here. Then I think that the
syntax at the end is also hard to follow, that is, I think
that “behind” is a little ambiguous…or that whole line is.
I think it might need more expression, I think you might need
to say “behind them,” or something… I have tinkered with
ways to alter it, and I can’t do it by tinkering… I think
it needs to be spread out a little, said a little more fully.
But I think the whole thing is here and lovely, it is just a
matter of small details.

I like Mute a whole lot, and think that the end of it
is very beautiful, but again I am puzzled by some details. I’m
not sure about the antecedent of “it” in the last line. The
farm? It’s pretty far away… It could be the name, but then
I wouldn’t understand what.

But I don’t really understand what happened at the beginning.
Did the boy fall into the ice, really and truly, or is it a
metaphor for something else? Obviously there is a pun going
on, when you say “the son broke through the surface,” because
one would constantly speak of “the sun breaking through the
clouds…” It seems like a metaphor because you say “the
surface/of their solid world” – but then I don’t know what
it is a metaphor of, or what sort of things it might be a
metaphor of, even. Just a death? Mourning and lamentation
come clear with the second sentence.

But I don’t really know why “sign” is singular, rather

2/

than the conventional plural notion. Does it really change it?
Or does it just mystify it? And why the suggestion of mother
and daughter kissing? Of course it need not be that. It can
be that each, separately, touches each’s own mouth… You see
I am wandering a bit in here! I love the old man getting drunk
and the mosquitoes and so on… And the sound stopping. Now I
am thinking that “it” must be “name,” but it almost seems as if
I ought to know what that name would be, or what sort of thing
it ought to be, and I feel sort of kept out or mystified by
the poem.

This sounds much more negative, about this poem, that I
Intend it to be. I like the poem a lot. Maybe you can help
me with it.

Of course it could be this damned head-cold still. But I
don’t think so completely.

Joey (and I in my own name, for that matter) has started
the campaign. Do not expect anything for a long time – well,
don’t expect anything ever, I suppose…but don’t expect even
shreds for a while. Not because I am slow but because publishers
are.

Love as ever,

Don

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Dear Don,

Thanks very much for your commentary
about the poems. I will let the letter cool
for a couple of days and then get the
poems out again.

In the meantime, here’s another one.
If you would respond to it sometime soon
I could get going on my October
submission.

I’m not sure what else I can send
along with it at this point, but
maybe something new will develop.

The writing grows regular now, thanks
to you, Jane and my afternoon teaching
schedule.

More thanks!

Love,

Wes

P.S. Knowing Joey is at work on the manuscript
lifts my spirits hugely–as does your full
letter about the poems I sent!

THE ICE RETREATS IN SUTTON

Suddenly, the town
as it was before
the season of ice:

trees, deeper
than anyone
can remember,

houses a century old
resting on stone–
and in the field,

taking the first
sun, two
lost Buicks

standing shoulder
to shoulder, hay
still in their mouths.

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Dear Don,

I hope these are clearer and better now.

Would you please let me know what you think
when you can? I am in hopes of putting
several poems into cold print for mailing
out to magazines soon.

Thanks.

Love,

Wes

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Wes McNair
Box 43
North Sutton, NH 03260

Dear Wes,

I like it very much. Could you bear, please, to add a
comma after “and in the field,”…? I think you would need one
in prose, for the grammar, and I miss it here.

The only other thing I wonder about is the force of “a
century old…” That is, I don’t know whether that is supposed
to be old, or young, or how that is supposed to be relevant – the
age itself. A century old is only an 1882 house, and it is not
very old for around here. What are you telling me, when you tell
me this? I understand what you are telling about the trees, and
heaven knows the Buicks – which are absolutely marvelous! But
what is that house a hundred years old for? Would it make any
difference if it were wood or stone or brick? Or green or white
or red? Or just a hundred years old? So it “begs a question,”
like they say. But I am being fairly picayune, I think.

Good for you with your writing on a schedule. Excellent.

Joey gets frustrated because people don’t answer letters…
But Joey does not get so frustrated for other people’s manuscripts
as other people get – or as Joey would get, were Joey handling his
own! Such is the utility of Joey!

Love as ever,
Don

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Wes McNair
Box 43
North Sutton, NH 03260

Dear Wes,

You are really building up a nice group
for Joey… Now it is true that I don’t really
understand the literal/figurative configuration
at the beginning of “Mute.” And if Howard Moss,
Peter Davison, and John Nims are as dumb as I
am, they will not buy it. But I think it is
very beautiful! (I would buy it, because I do
not demand to understand everything.) And I
really love it…but I must tell you I don’t
know what really happened to the son.

In Big Cars I would surely make it a
semi-colon after “seats”. Did I tell you a
comma last time? Then I wonder about a dash
after the word “here” in the next stanza…
I don’t think that the absence of punctuation
is quite right…

Love as ever,

Don

(Note: Don’s markings in brackets.)

BIG CARS

Ten years later
they arrive on the thruway,
pulling winged fenders and smiling
a lane wide—big cars,
old floats that took a wrong
corner somewhere and lost
the American dream parade. Around them

the strange, grilleless
cars of the future
hum at their tires—tiny aliens
of a planet out of gas.

To think of their long trip
just beginning—the irrepressible fuel
rising everywhere into their tanks!
For the first time, armrests
Unfolded out of seats, [;]
Out of the armrests, ashtrays!
Maps fell open to the new roads

That led them, finally, here [– ?]
to the right lanes of America,
the antiques of optimism
nobody understands or wants
except the poor. Or dictators

driving down boulevards in some country
where the poor do not have cars
and run alongside until it seems
that they themselves are riding
on soft shocks, under a sun roof,
toward the great plenty of the New World.

MUTE

Once on the last ice-cutting,
the son went through the surface
of their solid world,
coming to rest among the folded
legs of horses. Listening for him [fig/bit]

after all her tears was perhaps
what drew the mother
into the silence. Long afternoons
she sat with the daughter,
speaking in the sign language
they invented together,
going deaf to the world.

How, exactly, did they touch
their mouths? What was the thought
of the old man on the porch
growing so drunk by nightfall
he could not hear
mosquitoes in his ears?

There is so much no one remembers
about the farm where sound,
even the bawling of the unmilked cows,
came to a stop. Even the man’s name,

which neighbors must have spoken
passing by in twilight, on their way
to forgetting it forever.

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Well, I’m glad you like “The Ice Retreats in Sutton,”
but I wish its intent were clearer to you.

I was hoping to convey the impression of a long winter–
the retreat of ice humorously recalling the end of an
ice age. Thus, the Buicks would be seen as mastadons [sic],
“hay/still in their mouths.”

Because of that intent, I wanted the farm to appear
ancient–more or less so. So, the reference to
“a century old.” (True, that does mean 1882,
hardly an ancient time.)

Do you think “houses centuries old/resting
on stone” would work better. Or do you think this
whole idea of the farm after an ice age flops,
houses and all?

I hope a small change will solve the problem,
but I fear I’ll have to abandon the project
until some later time…

2/

The other problem you raise–the needed comma after
“field,” is easily solved–

My writing schedule continues. It’s the
thing that sustains me in my other schedule.

Praise God for Joey’s utility!
And thanks for your letter.

Love,

Wes

I hope the cold is now out of your head.

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Wes McNair
Box 43
North Sutton, NH 03260

Dear Wes,

I think that the notion of the farm’s
return after the ice age is wonderful and clear.
And I love those Buicks with hay in their teeth…

But yes, a century confuses things,
because it is so recent… And even centuries
is perfectly historical, and not ice-age-ish.
I don’t know quite how to do it. I don’t think
that you are far away, by any means… No need
to abandon the project! I mean to say, could
you even do houses millennia old… I know they
are not, but then, the Buicks don’t eat hay
either!

Love as ever,

P.S. Wes: You have sent the manuscript to
Costanzo, have you not? If you have not, please
get it in the mail today. I just had a letter
from him, and he mentioned reading manuscripts…

Don

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Dear Don,

Diane bought me this, and while I’m glad to have
it and like it, I would really prefer stationery
a bit simpler–and cheaper. Would you send me
sometime the address of the company which does yours?
You mentioned once that prices there are low. Does
the company offer a variety of typefaces for name
and address?

Your notes about poems, sent so quickly after
my questions, have been enormously helpful. I
would be lost without your sympathetic and insightful
comments. Thank you.

If you like the enclosed–or any part of
what’s here–please pass it on to Joey. If you
have reservations, I will welcome your letter about
them. I am at work (always) on others, but they
may be awhile. I had hoped for two more for
this batch, but they remain under their stone,
until some later resurrection!

By the way, I did send the book to Costanzo–
this, after your OK.

The attached check is for Ploughshares poems,

2/

which earned $25.

Fall is lovely here–the trees beautiful,
even as their leaves fall. We live in such light!

I think of your fall, pleasantly
haunted by memories of kicking leaves against
the house–and by the Blue Ghost. I trust
you are enjoying the season!

Love to you and Jane,

Wes

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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

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Dear Don,

“Retreats” was meant as a word about the
“ice age.” But if you think it sounds like a
military word, I want to change it.

Thus, the enclosed. I do like the title better!

If you have any doubts about the grammar
of “Paul,” please let me know.

It’s off to school! I’m very glad
you like the poems!

Love,

Wes

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Wes McNair

Dear Wes,

I like the new title. It is not that I care
whether “retreat” was meant about the ice-age, and
it is not that I think it “sounds like” a military
word. “Retreat” is always a military word –
whether it is spoken about the Dow Jones Index, or
the colons in autumn, or the ice in the spring, or
anything. Just as the word “cradle” is always a
wooden object for rocking babies in, even when we
cradle a submachine gun…

Love,

Don

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Dear Don,

I hope you and Joey like the enclosed. If
you both do, please let me know and keep it.

If there are reservations, I will just wait
and return to it later.

Writing is ‘going fine’ in spite of all
my teaching and other duties! I remain on
my daily schedule!

Love,

Wes

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Wes McNair
Box 43
North Sutton, NH 03260

Dear Wes,

I think this is extremely beautiful, possibly even one
of your very best – and I think it has one horrible word in it.
A gross and palpable dead metaphor in the word “cradling.” (It
is the same dead metaphor which practically ruins Roethke’s
Meadow Mouse…but not quite.) (You are alive: you can change
it!) There are some people who actually say that the bandito cradled
the Thompson sub-machine gun – and then claim that they are not
comparing the sub-machine gun to a baby!

It is another one like “cupping” and “darting” which is
very commonly used, but is a dead metaphor. There is a man
who sends poems to the Country Journal who tries to tell me
that the word “wake,” as in “in the wake of the scythe,” has
absolutely nothing to do with water, because after all his
Webster’s and his Roget tell him that it means “aftermath” and
things like that…

Anyway, could you find something else for that? And there
is one other dead metaphor, which is “framed,” but it is not
such a sore thumb as “cradling.” I would infinitely prefer
that there were something besides an oil painting or a window
in that line, because “framed” in the sense of “outlined” or
“surrounded” is very very dead… But it is not so bad as
cradling and I can’t pretend it is.

The only other thing I have any doubt about at all is the
rhythm in “just look down at the rug/ on rugs to wear…” (sic: “where”) A whole
lot of monosyllables without much importance to any of them,
and it makes for a dead patch in the rhythm, and it is especially
in the first line there. I wonder if it might be possible to
take out at least one of the little words.

But what I started out with is the real thing. This is
absolutely wonderful.

Love as ever,

Don

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Dear Don–

Since it is 11:50 AM, I must
fly to the post with this revision.

If you think it’s ready, please
hand it to Joey.

Many thanks for the advice!

Love,

Wes

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Wes McNair

Dear Wes,

Well, I love it, which means that Joey is
likely to approve of it… Thanks a million.

Best as ever,

Don