{"id":1787,"date":"2012-04-13T15:15:23","date_gmt":"2012-04-13T19:15:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/?p=1787"},"modified":"2013-12-18T21:04:45","modified_gmt":"2013-12-19T01:04:45","slug":"mcnair-to-hall-november-18-1980","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/mcnair-to-hall-november-18-1980\/","title":{"rendered":"McNair to Hall: November 18, 1980"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
\"McNair-to-Hall-11-18-1980\"<\/a>\"McNair-to-Hall-11-18-1980\"<\/a>\"McNair-to-Hall-11-18-1980\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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

November 18, 1980<\/p>\n

Dear Don,<\/p>\n

Have just gotten back from Keene, where Diane\u2019s
\nfather\u2019s funeral just took place. He was in the hospital
\nfor three weeks, had a broken hip, which (because he
\nwas a \u201cbleeder\u201d) was complicated to fix. Eventually
\nthe operation on the hip led to two other operations \u2013
\none to prevent a blood clot in his leg from moving, the
\nother to remove a very<\/span> diseased gall bladder,
\nwhich was preventing the blood from clotting, even after
\nmedication for coagulation was administered. But the
\nbleeding wouldn\u2019t stop; indeed, there was much more
\nof it after the latter operations. And so he died.
\nIt\u2019s been a sad time. That guy meant a lot to all of us.<\/p>\n

The fact is, all the news I have for you today
\nis upsetting. I just learned from the editors of
\nThe Journal of Popular Culture<\/span> that \u201cThe Thugs of
\nOld Comics\u201d was never published by them, even though
\nthey sent me a note of acceptance back in the fall
\nof 1976. The poem was to be published, or so I thought,
\nduring my year out of the country. It occurred to me
\nthe other day that I never did receive a copy of
\nthe issue the poem appeared in, so I wrote to ask<\/p>\n

2\/<\/p>\n

about getting one. No one there has any record of
\nreceiving or accepting the poem, I am told, and, of course,
\nit never did appear.<\/p>\n

It is the sort of half-assedness I\u2019ve come to expect
\nfrom The Popular Culture Association; which seems to
\nscrew everything up, from conferences to subscriptions.
\nInitially, I was ticked at the magazine editors,
\nas you can imagine, but I have come to think the
\nfoul-up may be to my advantage because the poem is,
\nI think, a good one that better magazines might be
\ninterested in. Anyway, I do want you and Joey to
\nknow that I have told the JPC I will publish
\nthe poem elsewhere \u2013 called<\/span> to this, actually \u2013
\nand the editor I spoke with \u2013 Pat Browne \u2013
\nsheepishly agreed <\/del>concurred with my decision to do so.<\/p>\n

I therefore enclose a copy of the poem. It would
\nperhaps go well with the \u201cpop\u201d material which
\nNims has accepted. Or maybe, do you think, at
\nThe New Yorker<\/span>? Whatever<\/span> Joey decides to do with
\nit, I will be ok, I\u2019m sure. He knows best, and he
\nhas just proved it again by working the recent
\ncombination with Nims!<\/p>\n

Do you recall your suggestion that the word \u201cbeat\u201d
\nin my earlier version of the poem might be changed to \u201cbeating\u201d?
\nI did make that change, as you see, but I am still a bit
\nworried that the \u201c-ing\u2019s\u201d pile up at the end of the poem.
\nIf you think not<\/span>, I\u2019m happy. —And speaking of the end<\/span>,
\nhere I am at the bottom of the pages \u2013 so I\u2019ll stop.<\/p>\n

Love, Wes<\/p>\n

THE THUGS OF OLD COMICS<\/p>\n

At first the job is a cinch like
\nthey said. They manage to get the bank teller
\na couple of times in the head and blow the vault door so high
\nit never comes down. Money bags line the shelves
\ninside like groceries. They are rich, richer
\nthan they can believe. Above his purple suit the boss
\nis grinning half outside of his face.
\nTwo goons are taking the dough in their arms
\nlike their first women. For a minute nobody sees
\nthe little thug with the beanie is sweating drops
\nthe size of hot dogs and pointing
\nstraight up. There is a blue man flying
\ndown through the skylight and landing with his arms
\ncrossed. They exhale their astonishment
\ninto small balloons. \u201cWhat the,\u201d they say,
\n\u201cWhat the,\u201d watching their bullets drop
\noff his chest over and over. Soon he begins to talk
\nabout the fight against evil, beating them half to death
\nwith his fists. Soon they are picking themselves up
\nfrom the floor of the prison. Out the window Superman
\nis just clearing a tall building and couldn\u2019t care less
\nwhen they shout his name through the bars. \u201cWe\u2019re trapped!
\nWe got no chance!\u201d they say, tightening their teeth,<\/p>\n

thinking, like you, how it always gets down
\nto the same old shit: no fun, no dough,
\nno power to rise out of their bodies.<\/p>\n

– Wesley McNair<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

\n

A note from McNair about this letter:<\/strong><\/em><\/span>\u00a0Don made his suggestion about “The Thugs of Old Comics” in person at his farmhouse. As it turned out, the poem was never published by Poetry<\/em> or any other magazine, so I published it myself in my first book, where it appears in the above form. Later, I shortened some of its lines, as I did with “Hair on Television,” so they would fit into the normal 55-character line limit of publishers (in particular my later publisher, David R. Godine) and therefore would not have to be broken. This became a standard practice for me whenever I wrote a poem, using the 55 character line to shape my sense of the poem’s turns and vocal intonation. Here are the two poems as they appear on the 55-character grid in Lovers of the Lost <\/em>:<\/p>\n

Read\u00a0<\/span>The Thugs of Old Comics<\/span><\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Read Hair on Television<\/span><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n

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

[Click image to view] November 18, 1980 Dear Don, Have just gotten back from Keene, where Diane\u2019s father\u2019s funeral just took place. He was in the hospital for three weeks, had a broken hip, which (because he was a \u201cbleeder\u201d) was complicated to fix. Eventually the operation on the hip led to two other operations […]<\/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":[35324,35504,42976,42963,293],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1787"}],"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=1787"}],"version-history":[{"count":33,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1787\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11328,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1787\/revisions\/11328"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}