{"id":2101,"date":"2012-04-27T13:29:34","date_gmt":"2012-04-27T17:29:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/?p=2101"},"modified":"2013-12-18T21:27:43","modified_gmt":"2013-12-19T01:27:43","slug":"hall-to-mcnair-november-16-1981","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/hall-to-mcnair-november-16-1981\/","title":{"rendered":"Hall to McNair: November 16, 1981"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
\"Hall-to-McNair-11-16-1981\"<\/a>\"Hall-to-McNair-11-16-1981\"<\/a>\"Hall-to-McNair-11-16-1981\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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

16 November 1981<\/p>\n

Wes McNair
\nNorth Sutton, NH<\/p>\n

Dear Wes,<\/p>\n

I\u2019m so sorry to take so long with you, all fall. You
\nknow there have been all sorts of little things. And now I
\nhave been interrupted by this and by that \u2013 but (sic) a poetry
\nreading, by having to go down and watch the Celtics practice
\nand talk with Kevin McHale\u2026all sorts of things that just keep
\nme from concentrating.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t feel the urgency that you feel in one sense: the
\nbook is going to change every few months anyway. I know I may
\nbe wrong. I don\u2019t believe I\u2019m wrong. I don\u2019t think that you\u2019ve
\nhurt yourself madly by leaving these poems out \u2013 but I do think [you]
\nhurt the book. Because I think that these [poems] include some of
\nthe best things that you have written. I don\u2019t know as you are
\ndoing this, but let me counsel against something that some people
\ndo from time to time: they hold back on new poems in order
\nto get started on the next book. It is always wise, I do believe,
\nto print your best poems now<\/span>, and hold nothing back. And it is
\nwise to get rid of the weaker old ones, even when they are old
\naffections and old favorites for various reasons. Also, I would
\nsay that the shape of the book, that you perceive, as you put it
\ntogether, is far less important than the individual poems. I do
\nbelieve in trying for a shapely book \u2013 but only<\/span> after you make
\nthe decision to include all the best poems and leave out all the
\nweaker ones.<\/p>\n

The book will seem thicker, with more texture and tweed
\nto it, more grit, more content, and much more particularity, with
\nmost of these poems added, and one or two of the old ones taken
\nout. Just how you do it \u2013 just how you make it a single whole \u2013
\nI\u2019m not sure. But also, I do not worry terribly about it.<\/p>\n

I love the new one, by the way. I have one or two little things
\nto question about it. But very very good. The only one of these
\npoems \u2013 nine poems \u2013 that I would omit is The People upstairs. You
\nwere having some doubts about it. I would put the whole thing back
\nin the drawer. Two years from now you may find it and it may be
\nthe start of something else great. As I have come to see it, over
\nthe last year or two, I have come to feel that it does not work.
\nIt is too thin. It is too tenuous a music.<\/p>\n

I tend I guess usually to like your thicker and grosser
\nthings \u2013 like the absolutely wonderful Peaceable Kingdom, which
\nwas the poem in your manuscript at the very beginning which took
\nmy eye \u2013 and my eye has never left you since! The new one is an-
\nother one of your thick and gross things. (By \u201cgross\u201d I am using
\nan exaggeration, as opposed to the very ephemeral, very short-lined
\nthings, of which The People Upstairs is an example.)<\/p>\n

2\/<\/p>\n

Leaving out. I would leave out Elinore. Elinore has
\nnever been a favorite of mine, and as you have written more
\npoems, and gotten better and better, Elinore has receded until
\nElinore just waters the soup at this point. I think that you
\ncould put Holding the Goat and When Superman Died in the previous
\nsection. In general, I think maybe you have too many sections \u2013
\nand all the blank pages and the short line pages and the short
\npages combine to make the manuscript seem a lot thinner than it
\ngenuinely is. I want you to look for, and even enjoy<\/span> the idea
\nof greater bulkiness. The book feels thinner than you are. I
\nwould think about omitting some of the poems in the second part \u2013
\nbut I think that in a bulkier book they would stand up better.
\nThey wouldn\u2019t have to carry so much on their own backs. I don\u2019t
\nthink that Fire in Enfield or Kuhre are up to the best of your work\u2026
\nbut I don\u2019t think that they actively hurt you, unless they seem to
\nbe padding out the thin book. Lines or paragraphs like \u201cKuhre\/
\njust lurches\/ off\/into the tractors\/ noise and\/\u2026\u201d This is very
\nvery thin, when the word \u201coff\u201d has to carry whole line on its
\nback. And there is, in this second section, really less vigor
\nthan there is in much of your work. I like your work best when
\nit is thick and muscular or even fat, when it is vigorous in its
\npositive or negative way \u2013 I don\u2019t really make any distinction
\nbetween the positive and the negative! I make a distinction between
\nthe vigorous and the frail.<\/p>\n

I would leave out The People Upstairs. I would leave out
\nElinore. I would think about leaving out Kuhre or cutting things
\ndown. I would think about jamming things together a little more\u2026
\nAnd I would add these eight poems and I would have absolutely
\nno doubt about that. Of the eight, the most nearly weak one
\nis the Beggars. I meant to say, it is not quite<\/span> up to the wonderful
\nother ones. Even Calling Harold, tiny as it is, is wonderful and
\ngritty.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think you ought to worry about affirmation. I think
\nthat books work as well by contradiction as they do by consistency.
\nIn a poetry reading, for instance, I like to put poems right up
\nagainst each other that are absolutely opposites, that contradict
\neach other in every way\u2026you get energy from contradiction. And I
\nthink you can do this in a book as well. You need not \u2013 as everybody
\nassumes \u2013 print like with like. I really don\u2019t [like] printing by sections
\nanymore. Maybe I will do it again, as I used to do it, but in the
\nKicking I did not do it.<\/p>\n

I am writing in haste Monday morning, dictating that is,
\nand I must get up and drive down to Brookline almost immediately,
\nto watch the Celtics practice, then talk with Kevin McHale,
\nCedric Maxwell, and Bill Fitch, and then drive two and a half hours
\nback\u2026 It\u2019s a good life, really, and I\u2019m not complaining\u2026but
\nI mean to say I cannot answer your questions about Ploughshares
\n(and I probably won\u2019t know for sure for a month or two) and the
\nrevisions in the Herman\u2026although I like the poem as I read it
\nright now.<\/p>\n

3\/<\/p>\n

And I do love Mina Bell\u2019s Cows\u2026although I have a couple of
\nchanges to suggest. When you have contemplated the changes and
\npossibly made anything that sounds sensible, could I have another
\ncopy of it, for Joey that is?<\/p>\n

Three things. First of all, totally trivial, shouldn\u2019t it
\nbe hay \u201cchute\u201d? In my copy you have \u201cshute.\u201d It seems to me there
\nis the word \u201cshoot,\u201d partly working by folk etymology, but that
\nthe real word is \u201cchute\u201d from the French for \u201cfall.\u201d Maybe I\u2019m
\ntalking about a typo. Then in the last line, when I read it,
\nI hear it in a way that you didn\u2019t type it\u2026 I absolutely hear,
\nevery single time, \u201cwho never would come home.\u201d And Ifind (sic) it very
\nhard to say it the other way.<\/p>\n

Then I find something a little awkward in the second to last
\nline, it seems to center around the word \u201cand,\u201d which is idiomatic
\nenough, but not exactly grammatical, and a little strange\u2026and
\nkind of slows me down every time. And I am not sure that \u201cmeaning\u201d
\nis [the] exact word, or that it is the exact word if you come at it this
\nway. I mean to say, I might want you to say something like \u201cape,
\nape, as if she called all three of them,\/ her walleyed girls\u2026\u201d
\nI\u2019m not suggesting this as the right way to do it\u2026just that some-
\nhow the word \u201cmeaning\u201d seems like the author\u2019s interpretation,
\nand therefore to insert the author into the poem suddenly. The
\nauthor having a window into her skull and her hidden \u201cmeanings.\u201d<\/p>\n

I love the poem. Love the book, also,<\/p>\n

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

\n

A note from McNair about this letter:\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/span> In this extensive and insightful response, Don gave me a new way to think about arranging my book, which was organizing its poems around a signature approach that was beginning to emerge in my work. As I look back, I see that I bumped poems out of my manuscript partly because of my overly strict adherence to themes, and partly (though I never confessed this) to save them, out of the fear that the slow trickle of my work in this period might eventually dry up and leave me with only one collection.<\/p>\n

Below is the text of “Mina Bell’s Cows” as Don first saw it:<\/em><\/p>\n

Mina Bell’s Cows<\/p>\n

O where are Mina Bell’s cows, who gave no milk
\nand grazed on her dead husband’s farm?
\nEach day she walked with them into the field,
\nloving their swaybacked dreaminess more
\nthan the quickness of any dog or chicken.
\nEach night she brought them grain in the dim
\nBarn, holding their breath in her hands.
\nO when the lightning struck Daisy and Bets,
\nher son dug such great holes in the yard,
\nshe could not bear to watch him.
\nAnd when the baby, April, growing old
\nand wayward, fell down the hay shute,
\nMina just sat in the kitchen, crying, “Ape, Ape,”
\nand meaning all three cows, her beautiful
\nwalleyed girls who would never come home.<\/p>\n

See also a selection of McNair’s manuscript notes and drafts<\/span><\/a><\/span> for “Mina Bell’s Cows.”<\/p>\n

Read\u00a0Mina Bell’s Cows<\/strong><\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0<\/strong>(published version)<\/span><\/p>\n

Following Hall’s suggestion that “Memory of Kuhre” was too “thin,” McNair prepared this revised version<\/span><\/a><\/strong><\/span>, eventually published in his first book.<\/p>\n

Read The Last Peaceable Kingdom <\/strong><\/span><\/a><\/span>(published version)<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n\n

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

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