{"id":2004,"date":"2012-04-20T14:03:22","date_gmt":"2012-04-20T18:03:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/?p=2004"},"modified":"2013-12-18T21:18:56","modified_gmt":"2013-12-19T01:18:56","slug":"mcnair-to-hall-january-17-1981","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/mcnair-to-hall-january-17-1981\/","title":{"rendered":"McNair to Hall: January 17, 1981"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
\"McNair-to-Hall-01-17-1981\"<\/a>\"McNair-to-Hall-01-17-1981\"<\/a>\"McNair-to-Hall-01-17-1981\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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

January 17, 1981<\/p>\n

Dear Don,<\/p>\n

I do hope your \u201cbig son\u201d is at least relating ok \u2013
\ntaking nourishment, and even drinking an occasional
\nbeer, as I think I recollect he enjoys doing. At least
\nwhat happened can be mended \u2013 no doubt the mending
\ngoes on right now, and that is good. My thoughts
\nare with you during this unpleasantness.<\/p>\n

Thank you for sending the notes from Poetry<\/span>. I
\nam awfully pleased to know the poems will appear there.
\nThe lift this gives me is especially important at
\nthis time, since, to tell the truth, I happen to be
\ngoing through a very down period. In the past
\nfew weeks, I have found myself crying a lot,
\nimmersed in regrets of various kinds, painfully
\naware of the cost of running too hard in
\nmy life. I am told \u201cThis Thing\u201d happens to
\nothers. Did \u201cit\u201d happen to you at roughly my
\nage? I have been, I think, fighting it off
\nfor a couple of years, at least. But the thing
\nis here now, full force. I guess I am relieved<\/p>\n

2\/<\/p>\n

in a way to have lost control, to have found this new
\ncontact with my emotions; yet how much everything
\nhurts! And how irrelevant the \u201cmain memories\u201d
\nof my life feel!<\/p>\n

You can see, then, why I have not written to you
\nfor a while. I believe I am ready to do better
\nwith that now. But I did want you to know why
\nthis lapse!<\/p>\n

Even writing<\/span> is hard to do \u2013 that is, poetry<\/span> writing \u2013
\nespecially when I am in the process of discovering
\nhow much about my \u201cinner life\u201d my poems contain,
\neven when they are about subjects quite removed
\nfrom personal experience. Of course, I always knew
\nall my poems were autobiographical, as everyone\u2019s
\nare. It\u2019s just that I never knew how much<\/span>
\nautobiography was there!<\/p>\n

Anyway, I do send a poem along \u2013 a new
\nversion of a piece you saw earlier. I hope
\nto be sending other stuff, too, in the not-too-distant
\nfuture.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, best to you, your son, and
\nyour wife \u2013 and thank you again for all your notes.<\/p>\n

Love,<\/p>\n

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

\n

Editorial note about this letter<\/em><\/span>:<\/strong> The poem that McNair mentions at the end of this letter is “A Dream of Herman” (see December 9, 1980<\/span><\/a><\/span>) for which he changed the word “riffled” to “scribbled,” responding to Don’s earlier critique, though he has not yet dealt with Don’s rejection of the “perfect iambic pentameter” in the poem’s last line.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n\n

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

[Click image to view] January 17, 1981 Dear Don, I do hope your \u201cbig son\u201d is at least relating ok \u2013 taking nourishment, and even drinking an occasional beer, as I think I recollect he enjoys doing. At least what happened can be mended \u2013 no doubt the mending goes on right now, and that […]<\/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":[35323,35504,42976,42963,293],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2004"}],"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=2004"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2004\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11336,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2004\/revisions\/11336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}