{"id":1628,"date":"2012-03-05T16:01:57","date_gmt":"2012-03-05T20:01:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/?p=1628"},"modified":"2013-10-24T20:51:48","modified_gmt":"2013-10-25T00:51:48","slug":"mcnair-to-hall-july-3-1980","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/mcnair-to-hall-july-3-1980\/","title":{"rendered":"McNair to Hall: July 3, 1980"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
\"McNair-to-Hall-07-03-1980\"<\/a>\"McNair-to-Hall-07-03-1980\"<\/a>\"McNair-to-Hall-07-03-1980\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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

July 3, 1980<\/p>\n

Dear Don,<\/p>\n

Hoping that I might hear something positive from U.
\nPittsburg about my book, I have held off writing to you
\nuntil now. You will remember that last year Ed Ochester
\nat Pittsburg asked me to resubmit my manuscript this
\nyear. Well, the thing got rejected again. Ochester
\nsaid he liked the \u201cGoing Back to 5th Grade\u201d sections
\nand \u201cFaces of Americans,\u201d and he re-invited me to
\nresubmit next<\/span> year.<\/p>\n

Weary of resubmitting – also to Yale, where the
\nbook was also rejected – I am quite down about things
\nright now. I did not realize, I guess, how difficult
\npublishing the book was going to be. And yet I should
\nnot be ungrateful, I know. I am very lucky to have
\nthe NEA grant, and besides, others have tried longer
\nthan I have so far to get books published, with no
\nbetter results. I will certainly come out of this,
\neventually. I have put entirely too much stock in
\nthe Pittsburg possibility – that is the problem. I am
\nin the process of resolving really and truly not to
\n\u201cexpect\u201d in the future.<\/p>\n

The thing to do now, I guess, is to send the book
\nto other places. Would it do any good at all to<\/p>\n

2\/<\/p>\n

send it to places like Viking, Doubleday and Knopf?
\nThat is, would these houses be likely to even read an
\nunsolicited first book of poems? I suppose you will
\nsay \u201cno\u201d to this, and anyway, I am thinking
\nmainly of university presses for the book – Illinois,
\nPrinceton and Carnegie-Mellon – if you think these
\nare good choices. Should I mail it to U. Georgia,
\nwhere Paul Zimmer now is? My main interest at this
\npoint is in being published at a press whose books
\nare likely to be reviewed widely – and picked up
\nlater by anthologies.<\/p>\n

Earlier, you mentioned the possibility of Houghton
\nMifflin. I do intend to send HM poems for
\nreview in the fall, the procedure for those who wish
\nto qualify for consideration in the \u201cNew Poetry\u201d
\nseries. Since I have little confidence in my own
\ncapacity to choose the \u201creview\u201d poems (my choices
\nlast year, you may recall, led to my being
\ndisqualified), I wonder if you would mind suggesting
\npoems to send when the time comes? I would
\nappreciate your help here, though of course I realize
\nthat whatever help one gets, (to use your words) \u201cit\u2019s
\na lottery.\u201d<\/p>\n

3\/<\/p>\n

I am happy with the writing I am doing now,
\nin spite of my current depression. (As I write
\nof \u201cdepression,\u201d it comes to me that last night
\nI dreamed all<\/span> night of falling – an interesting
\nnew expression of the vertical metaphor which I
\nseem to write about so much!) I have decided
\nthat I will not trouble you with the individual<\/span>
\npoems I complete, as I have done in the past-
\nthat I will send you small batches of poems instead.
\nMy first batch is not yet ready, but I am writing
\ndaily and steadily, and you shall see results in
\ndue time.<\/p>\n

There is, after all, no one whose opinion I value
\nmore – or half as much – as yours. It is my
\nextraordinary luck that you have been there
\nwith concern and encouragement, even in the
\nmost discouraging times. That gives me hope
\nthat the long wait will one day prove worthwhile.
\nI am everlastingly grateful for your faith
\nin my poems.<\/p>\n

Love,<\/p>\n

Wes<\/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] July 3, 1980 Dear Don, Hoping that I might hear something positive from U. Pittsburg about my book, I have held off writing to you until now. You will remember that last year Ed Ochester at Pittsburg asked me to resubmit my manuscript this year. Well, the thing got rejected again. […]<\/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":[35324,35504,42973,42963,293],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1628"}],"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=1628"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1628\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9512,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1628\/revisions\/9512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}