{"id":2171,"date":"2012-04-30T11:39:57","date_gmt":"2012-04-30T15:39:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/?p=2171"},"modified":"2013-12-17T16:33:19","modified_gmt":"2013-12-17T20:33:19","slug":"mcnair-to-hall-september-20-1982","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/mcnair-to-hall-september-20-1982\/","title":{"rendered":"McNair to Hall: September 20, 1982"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
\"Letter<\/a>\"Letter<\/a>\"Letter<\/a><\/p>\n

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

September 20, 1982<\/p>\n

Dear Don,<\/p>\n

Are you too deeply occupied to say if my
\nverse is alive?<\/p>\n

I will be sending poems for the fall campaign
\non \u201cflat paper\u201d, as you requested, soon. Perhaps
\nthey will include the enclosed verses, in some form.<\/p>\n

In case you did not open the package containing
\nmy manuscript and see my note in it, I
\nask again the question the note asks: Should
\nI send a copy of the book to Costanzo at
\nCarnegie-Mellon, or is it a sure thing he
\nwon\u2019t consider publishing it now?<\/p>\n

My visit to Eagle Pond Farm helped! I\u2019m
\nwriting!<\/p>\n

Will let you know more soon about that dinner–<\/p>\n

Love,<\/p>\n

Wes<\/p>\n

BIG CARS<\/p>\n

Ten years later they arrive
\non the thruway, pulling their winged
\nfenders and smiling a lane wide–
\nbig cars, old floats that took a wrong
\ncorner somewhere and lost
\nthe American Dream parade. Around them<\/p>\n

the strange, grilleless
\ncars of their future
\nhum at their tires–tiny aliens
\nof a planet out of gas.<\/p>\n

To think of their long trip
\njust beginning–the irrepressible fuel
\nrising everywhere into their tanks!
\nArmrests unfolding out of seats,
\nout of the armrests, ashtrays! Maps
\nfalling open to the new roads<\/p>\n

which led them, finally, here
\nto the right lands of America,
\nsuddenly the antiques of optimism
\nnobody wants or understands
\nexcept the poor. Or dictators<\/p>\n

cruising the boulevards of some country
\nwhere the poor do not have cars
\nand run behind until it seems
\nthat they themselves are riding
\non soft shocks, under a sun roof
\ntoward the great plenty of the New World.<\/p>\n

MUTE<\/p>\n

Once, on the last ice-cutting,
\nthe son broke through the surface
\nof their solid world,
\ncoming to rest among the folded
\nlegs of horses. Listening for him<\/p>\n

after all her tears was perhaps
\nwhat drew the mother
\ninto that silence. Long afternoons
\nshe sat with her daughter,
\nspeaking in the sign they invented
\ntogether, going deaf to the world.<\/p>\n

How, exactly, did they touch
\ntheir mouths? What was the thought
\nof the old man on the porch,
\ngrowing so drunk by nightfall
\nhe could not hear
\nmosquitoes in his ears.<\/p>\n

There is so much no one remembers
\nabout the farm where sound,
\neven the bawling of the unmilked cows,
\ncame to a stop. Even the name<\/p>\n

that neighbors must have spoken
\npassing by in twilight, on their way
\nto forgetting it forever.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

\n

A note from McNair about this letter:<\/strong><\/em><\/span> The opening is a quotation from Emily Dickinson\u2019s 1864 letter to Thomas Higginson.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n\n

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

[Click image to view] September 20, 1982 Dear Don, Are you too deeply occupied to say if my verse is alive? I will be sending poems for the fall campaign on \u201cflat paper\u201d, as you requested, soon. Perhaps they will include the enclosed verses, in some form. In case you did not open the package […]<\/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":[35294,35504,42979,42963,293],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2171"}],"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=2171"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2171\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11110,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2171\/revisions\/11110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}