{"id":2010,"date":"2012-04-20T14:15:56","date_gmt":"2012-04-20T18:15:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/?p=2010"},"modified":"2013-12-18T21:21:03","modified_gmt":"2013-12-19T01:21:03","slug":"hall-to-mcnair-january-27-1981","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/hall-to-mcnair-january-27-1981\/","title":{"rendered":"Hall to McNair: January 27, 1981"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
\"Hall-to-McNair-01-27-1981\"<\/a>\"Hall-to-McNair-01-27-1981\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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

27 January 1981<\/p>\n

Wes McNair
\nNorth Sutton
\nNew Hampshire<\/p>\n

Dear Wes,<\/p>\n

It was good to see you, however briefly, yesterday\u2026
\nand today I have your letter, mostly about Herman. I am glad
\nif the bottom seems to be raising a little. \u2026I do<\/span> appreciate
\nhaving helped some other people, from time to time \u2013 very much
\nincluding you. I believe it and I warm myself at that fire.
\nAnd then I remember Robert Frost, as quoted by Lowell in that
\npoem about Frost, Frost always so miserable about his family,
\nsaying how little good his own successes did his family. Well,
\nAndrew goes off Thursday, and I suppose I will keep my fingers
\ncrossed for the rest of my life \u2013 or his. I have hopes for him,
\nwith some reason I think. But his is a tenuous hold, really.
\nHe is another casualty of the sixties and the war, like many
\nmany of his generation. I don\u2019t suppose he will ever really
\nbe free of it. I mean simply that he grew up at a time when
\nresistence to authority was decent \u2013 and somehow or other it
\nwas a revolutionary act to drop acid when you were fourteen
\nyears old.<\/p>\n

I have been going over \u201cA Dream of Herman,\u201d and, yes,
\nI do feel certain about the last line. Of course this does
\nnot mean I am right! But I feel very certain. And I
\nunderstand about loving certain lines. They give one everything
\none could ever ask for! They are the golden dream! When I wrote
\nOx Cart Man, it ended with: \u201cbees wake\/ roused by the cry of
\nlilac.\u201d And I still<\/span> think it is just plain exquisite. But
\nit was decorative, finally; it came not at the end but after
\nthe end\u2026 Louis Simpson made me take it out! Sometime maybe
\nI will use it some place else.<\/p>\n

The last line here looks like a last line. It looks
\nlike something cherished and set apart and framed and put on
\ntop of the piano. The fact that it is iambic lends<\/span> to this
\nquality. It is not the only thing. Everything in it claims:
\nbeauty<\/span>. But therefore, somehow, it seems to look at itself,
\nand not at Herman or at the experience. It seems to be poetry<\/span>!
\n(I will understand that everything I say is answerable. But
\nyou reading this letter any way try to understand how I can
\nmean these things negatively.)<\/p>\n

I do have a suggestion. Cut it out. End the poem
\ninstead with something like this: \u201cAnd then he lifted his
\nsacks<\/del>x and opened\/ one more flourishing song.\u201d<\/p>\n

My \u201cflourishing\u201d is no good, but it is meant to do
\nsomething like the wideness of the trees, and the spectral
\nquality of the moment. You could end it simply \u201cone more song\u201d
\nbut the line would be terribly short, and I think we could
\nstand the perfect adjective right there. I\u2019m a little troubled
\nby the way the lines at the end get more consistently long,
\nanyway, and would be grateful for a short line, tying me back
\nto earlier line-lengths.<\/p>\n

I think of one weird coincidence \u2013 and that is all
\nit is. In The Alligator Bride, look at a poem called (I
\nthink it is called this) \u201cThe Old Pilot.\u201d That was my little
\nelegy for my first wife\u2019s father! I did indeed have some of
\nthe same problems. And I am not sure that I avoided sentimentality.<\/p>\n

I do not find this poem sentimental \u2013 except I guess
\nin a sense in this last line, probably especially with the
\nword \u201clovely,\u201d but really with the whole gesture of the line.
\nI think we should end with a fantasy of the real saxaphone [sic]
\nbursting into real $ong [sic].<\/p>\n

Love to you as ever,<\/p>\n

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

\n

A note from McNair about this letter:<\/em><\/strong><\/span>\u00a0The mention of seeing each other in Don’s letter to me, and my last letter to him, refers to our chance meeting in Carl Cochran’s office at Colby-Sawyer. “How are you doing?” Don wanted to know, his question — about my depression — carrying more meaning than Carl knew…. For me, the effort to perfect my elegy “A Dream of Herman” was a disheartening proposition. For though I had hoped to lift Diane’s spirits with the poem, she was too deep in grief to respond to it, in any of its revisions. In the end, I put the poem aside until the ensuing fall.<\/p>\n

Read The Old Pilot<\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>(published version)<\/span><\/p>\n\n

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

[Click image to view] 27 January 1981 Wes McNair North Sutton New Hampshire Dear Wes, It was good to see you, however briefly, yesterday\u2026 and today I have your letter, mostly about Herman. I am glad if the bottom seems to be raising a little. \u2026I do appreciate having helped some other people, from time […]<\/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":[35323,596,42965,35504,42976],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2010"}],"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=2010"}],"version-history":[{"count":29,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2010\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11338,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2010\/revisions\/11338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}