{"id":1922,"date":"2012-04-13T15:36:56","date_gmt":"2012-04-13T19:36:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/?p=1922"},"modified":"2013-12-18T21:08:16","modified_gmt":"2013-12-19T01:08:16","slug":"hall-to-mcnair-december-9-1980","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/hall-to-mcnair-december-9-1980\/","title":{"rendered":"Hall to McNair: December 9, 1980"},"content":{"rendered":"<table>\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"vertical-align: top; background: white; float: left;\"><a class=\"shutterset\" title=\"Letter from Hall to McNair, December 9, 1980, Page 1.  Colby College Special Collections.\" href=\"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/files\/2012\/04\/Hall-McNair-19801209-001-colby.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-2078 alignleft\" style=\"border: 1px solid gray; background: white;\" alt=\"Hall-to-McNair-12-09-1980\" src=\"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/files\/2012\/04\/Hall-McNair-19801209-001-colby.jpg\" width=\"250\" height=\"250\" \/><\/a><a class=\"shutterset\" title=\"Letter from Hall to McNair, December 9, 1980, Page 2.  Colby College Special Collections.\" href=\"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/files\/2012\/04\/Hall-McNair-19801209-002-colby.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-2078 alignleft\" style=\"border: 0px none; background: white; display: none;\" alt=\"Hall-to-McNair-12-09-1980\" src=\"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/files\/2012\/04\/Hall-McNair-19801209-002-colby.jpg\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"color: #808080;\">[Click image to view]<\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<td style=\"background: white; padding-left: 30px;\">9 Dec. 1980<\/p>\n<p>Dear Wes,<\/p>\n<p>That ought to be a very good poem\u2026 \u201cRiffled\u201d<br \/>\nis a cliche, false-color. The last line sounds too<br \/>\nmuch like a last line! It might end better simply<br \/>\nwithout it. It is absolutely perfect iambic pen-<br \/>\ntameter, which is one reason why it sounds like<br \/>\na last line. And \u201clovely\u201d seems just vaguely honorific<br \/>\nto me\u2026 What kind of song is a \u201clovely song\u201d?<br \/>\nI think I like the floating trees. I wish it were<br \/>\nnot iambic at all.<\/p>\n<p>Don<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<hr \/>\n<p><em><span style=\"color: #ff6600;\"><strong>Editorial note about this letter:<\/strong><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/em>\u00a0The poem Don is discussing in this letter is the elegy, &#8220;A Dream of Herman.&#8221; In it, McNair pays tribute to his father-in-law, Herman Reed, a band leader, whose life seemed to him &#8220;unsung&#8221; in his letter of <span style=\"color: #800000;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/mcnair-to-hall-november-24-1980\/\" target=\"_blank\"><span style=\"color: #800000;\">November 24, 1980<\/span><\/a><\/span>. Here is the draft Hall responded to on December 9.<\/p>\n<p>A Dream of Herman<\/p>\n<p>I was driving the old Dodge wagon<br \/>\nagain, with Coke cans rolling<br \/>\nto the front at stop signs,<br \/>\nand you rubbing the dash<br \/>\nevery so often to thank the car<br \/>\nfor not needing the spare tire<br \/>\nwe hadn\u2019t fixed. We were on a trip<br \/>\nthat felt like going to your father\u2019s camp, only<br \/>\nwe never got there and didn\u2019t care.<br \/>\nIt was a beautiful day, just enough wind<br \/>\ncoming into the back to make the kids<br \/>\nsquint with pure pleasure<br \/>\nas it riffled their hair, and your mother<br \/>\npatted them, saying what a nice ride it was<br \/>\nin the odd, small voice<br \/>\nshe used only for your father.<br \/>\nIt was then in the rearview mirror I saw him,<br \/>\nwearing the brown cardigan he always wore<br \/>\nand putting on the shining bell<br \/>\nof his saxophone as if just back<br \/>\nfrom an intermission. You were smiling,<br \/>\nand suddenly I saw the reason<br \/>\nwe were traveling together<br \/>\nand did not want to stop<br \/>\nwas Herman, who just sat there<br \/>\nin the cargo space, breathing the scale<br \/>\nuntil the whole family sat back<br \/>\nin their seats, and then he lifted his sax<br \/>\nand opened one more song<br \/>\nas wide and lovely as the floating trees.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #800000;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/a-dream-of-herman\/\"><span style=\"color: #800000;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<!--themify_builder_content-->\n<div id=\"themify_builder_content-1922\" data-postid=\"1922\" class=\"themify_builder_content themify_builder_content-1922 themify_builder tf_clear\">\n    <\/div>\n<!--\/themify_builder_content-->\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[Click image to view] 9 Dec. 1980 Dear Wes, That ought to be a very good poem\u2026 \u201cRiffled\u201d is a cliche, false-color. The last line sounds too much like a last line! It might end better simply without it. It is absolutely perfect iambic pen- tameter, which is one reason why it sounds like a [&hellip;]<\/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":[35324,596,42965,35504,42976],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1922"}],"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=1922"}],"version-history":[{"count":28,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1922\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11332,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1922\/revisions\/11332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}