{"id":1442,"date":"2012-02-22T18:16:17","date_gmt":"2012-02-22T22:16:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/?p=1442"},"modified":"2013-10-24T18:19:18","modified_gmt":"2013-10-24T22:19:18","slug":"hall-to-mcnair-october-12-1979","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/hall-to-mcnair-october-12-1979\/","title":{"rendered":"Hall to McNair: October 12, 1979"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
\"Hall-to-McNair-10-12-1979\"<\/a>\"Hall-to-McNair-10-12-1979\"<\/a><\/p>\n

[Click image to view]<\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n

12 October 1979<\/p>\n

Wes McNair
\nDept. of English
\nColby-Sawyer College
\nNew London, NH 03260<\/p>\n

Dear Wes,<\/p>\n

It is kind of maddening of me to admit this, but I cannot stop
\nfrom doing it: I have known that glorious secret for about two
\nmonths. But I was sworn to secrecy (which I will retain) and I
\nlike to be somebody you can count on. I was bursting to tell
\nyou, but I had promised that I would not tell you. But it was a
\ngreat pleasure for me, to hold that inside, and to think that you
\nwould be hearing about it one of these days. The person who was
\nthe chairman of that committee, which gave you the award, the
\nchairman of the literature committee of the NEA, or something like
\nthat was\u2026Frances McCullough! You might say, your fellowship is
\nnot a bad sign in coming (partly) from an editor as well as from
\nother poets.<\/p>\n

I know those fellowships well, and most of my friends \u2013 the
\nolder ones, that is \u2013 have had one. Jane tried this year, and
\napparently did not. I tried years ago, twice in a row, and got
\nturned down. But back then they were only worth three or four
\nthousand dollars anyway. What are you going to do? My only, very
\nfaint<\/span> distaste about all this is that I bet you will be off next
\nautumn, when I am teaching. Well, I cannot complain. I\u2019m absolutely
\ndelighted, and I hope that you translate those dollars into poems,
\nwith a little leisure, time to read, time to take walks \u2013 such as
\nyou have never had, or not for twenty years or so. I\u2019m really so
\nhappy for you I cannot tell you.<\/p>\n

Joey has the word. Actually, there are some poems at the New
\nYorker right now. The New Yorker saw a few last spring, and by the
\ntime they had decided not to take them, it was too late to send them
\nother ones \u2013 so they had to wait until this autumn. Joey will hold
\n[Written in margin: i.e. they close down all summer for poems]
\nonto these until he hears from The New Yorker about the ones that
\nThe New Yorker already has. And by the way, Joey just made his second
\nsale to that magazine.<\/p>\n

Joey needed fair copies of the two poems because he doesn\u2019t
\nlike to steal Donald\u2019s. And Donald\u2019s, as a matter of fact, were residing
\ntogether with your letter in a box which will achieve the immortality
\nof files at the University of New Hampshire.<\/p>\n

Joey says send no stamps, he will just keep ten per cent, like
\nall the other agents.<\/p>\n

The Bly poem is one of his best known, from his best known book,
\nSleepers Joining Hands<\/span>. I assumed you would know it.<\/p>\n

2\/<\/p>\n

I have not had time to read the new manuscript. In the last
\nfew days, I have mailed a two-thousand word article to The Nation,
\na book review; a treatment of \u201cfilm\u201d for a textbook; and a three-
\nthousand word article on Robert Giroux for the New York Times Book
\nReview. I have finished drafting six thousand words for Country Journal,
\ntwenty-thousand words of an Appendix for a textbook, and a three-thousand
\nword introduction to the textbook\u2026 I have been writing twenty to
\nthirty pages a day, and revising earlier draft on the same days. And
\nnext week I go away for five days, four reading in four nights. Life
\nis full, you might say.<\/p>\n

I would like to keep this copy. Why don\u2019t you send a copy
\n– after it returns from Dartmouth College, further duplicated \u2013 to
\nFran McCullough at Harper & Row, telling her you have added a
\nbit and updated a bit. \u2026And asking her how she likes the changes.
\nShe is, by the way, a very clever intuitive editor for such things.
\nShe helped me quite a bit with the structure of Kicking the Leaves<\/span>.
\nI say \u201cintuitive\u201d because she finds it hard to tell why she thinks
\nwhat she thinks. But once she really thinks something, one does
\nwell to pay attention.<\/p>\n

I really look forward to reading the revision, and new poems,
\nand everything\u2026but the thing I look forward to the most is your time
\noff from teaching because of this new fellowship!<\/p>\n

Love as ever,<\/p>\n

Don<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

\n\n
\n <\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Click image to view] 12 October 1979 Wes McNair Dept. of English Colby-Sawyer College New London, NH 03260 Dear Wes, It is kind of maddening of me to admit this, but I cannot stop from doing it: I have known that glorious secret for about two months. But I was sworn to secrecy (which I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2341,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[803,596,42965,35504,42971],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1442"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2341"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1442"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1442\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9485,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1442\/revisions\/9485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}