{"id":1484,"date":"2012-02-27T13:34:21","date_gmt":"2012-02-27T17:34:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/?p=1484"},"modified":"2013-10-24T20:31:09","modified_gmt":"2013-10-25T00:31:09","slug":"mcnair-to-hall-february-2-1980","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/mcnair-to-hall-february-2-1980\/","title":{"rendered":"McNair to Hall: February 2, 1980"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
\"McNair-to-Hall-02-02-1980\"<\/a>\"McNair-to-Hall-02-02-1980\"<\/a>\"McNair-to-Hall-02-02-1980\"<\/a>\"McNair-to-Hall-02-02-1980\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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

February 2, 1980<\/p>\n

Dear Don,<\/p>\n

Your letter of January 29 contains the worst
\nmessage I have ever received in the mail. I
\nam upset that you will no longer handle my poems.
\nBut I am immeasurably more upset that I have
\nmanaged to hurt you and no doubt Jane
\nso terribly.<\/p>\n

The least I owe you is an account of the
\ncircumstances which led to my January 21st
\nletter to you. First of all, I sent the three
\npoems to Howard Dinin as a result of his
\nrather desperate request that I give him
\nsome work related to the idea of \u201chome\u201d for
\nhis first issue of The Boston Monthly,<\/span> which
\nwas short of material. There is no good
\nexcuse for not letting you know about my
\ndecision to send Howard the poems; I can
\nonly tell you that since it was nine months<\/p>\n

2\/<\/p>\n

after I had given the poems to you, I did not take
\nseriously the possibility that they might be
\npublished by someone else. Needless to say, I
\nshould have taken that possibility seriously. To make
\nmatters worse, I let the whole thing slide until I had
\nforgotten it. I did not think about the poems again until
\nthe night of our dinner, when it came up that I had
\npublished in The Boston Monthly.<\/span> You said you hoped none
\nof the poems were in the batch Joey had, and I said
\n\u201cno,\u201d seeing the seriousness of my lapse, and lacking
\nthe courage to be forthright with you and face the
\nloss of your esteem. Afterward, I sent my letter,
\nwhich contained the \u201cduplicity\u201d you have
\nmentioned, and which took my lack of
\ncourage one step further.<\/p>\n

I cannot blame you for responding as you have.
\nYou are wrong to imagine that I might \u201cconceal
\nand equivocate\u201d as a matter of course in my
\ndealings with editors, though I can easily
\nunderstand why you would so imagine. Ironically,<\/p>\n

3\/<\/p>\n

the equivocation I have been guilty of with you,
\na friend and mentor, I have not practiced with
\nanyone else. The only time I came even close
\nwas when I allowed the woman from The Concord
\nMonitor<\/span> to quote \u201cThe Thin Man,\u201d assuming,
\nna\u00efvely, that quoting a poem within an article
\nwas not tantamount to publication of the poem.
\nThat I have treated you in this careless
\nand dishonest way, failing to be straight
\nwith you until the moment I was forced to,
\nis a thing that I will never forgive myself
\nfor. I am entirely unable to square my
\nbehavior with the appreciation and
\ngenerous support which you and Jane have
\ngiven me \u2013 without which I might well
\nhave lost faith in my writing. I can
\nonly determine at this point that I will
\nuse what has happened to instruct me in
\nhow to be more forthright in the future<\/p>\n

2\/<\/p>\n

with others,
\nespecially those I respect and love.<\/p>\n

I remain deeply grateful for all that you
\nhave done for me. I am profoundly sorry that I
\nhave handled this thing so poorly.<\/p>\n

Sincerely,<\/p>\n

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

\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\n

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

[Click image to view] February 2, 1980 Dear Don, Your letter of January 29 contains the worst message I have ever received in the mail. I am upset that you will no longer handle my poems. But I am immeasurably more upset that I have managed to hurt you and no doubt Jane so terribly. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2206,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35324,35504,42973,42963,293],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1484"}],"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\/2206"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1484"}],"version-history":[{"count":28,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1484\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9502,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1484\/revisions\/9502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}