{"id":2183,"date":"2012-04-30T11:46:21","date_gmt":"2012-04-30T15:46:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/?p=2183"},"modified":"2013-12-18T21:42:48","modified_gmt":"2013-12-19T01:42:48","slug":"hall-to-mcnair-september-30-1982","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/hall-to-mcnair-september-30-1982\/","title":{"rendered":"Hall to McNair: September 30, 1982"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
\"Letter<\/a>\"Letter<\/a>\"Letter<\/a><\/p>\n

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

30 September 1982<\/p>\n

Wes McNair
\nBox 43
\nNorth Sutton, NH 03260<\/p>\n

Dear Wes,<\/p>\n

You are really building up a nice group
\nfor Joey\u2026 Now it is true that I don\u2019t really
\nunderstand the literal\/figurative configuration
\nat the beginning of \u201cMute.\u201d And if Howard Moss,
\nPeter Davison, and John Nims are as dumb as I
\nam, they will not buy it. But I think it is
\nvery beautiful! (I would buy it, because I do
\nnot demand to understand everything.) And I
\nreally love it\u2026but I must tell you I don\u2019t
\nknow what really<\/span> happened to the son.<\/p>\n

In Big Cars I would surely make it a
\nsemi-colon after \u201cseats\u201d. Did I tell you a
\ncomma last time? Then I wonder about a dash
\nafter the word \u201chere\u201d in the next stanza\u2026
\nI don\u2019t think that the absence of punctuation
\nis quite right\u2026<\/p>\n

Love as ever,<\/p>\n

Don<\/p>\n

(Note: Don\u2019s markings in brackets.)<\/p>\n

BIG CARS<\/p>\n

Ten years later
\nthey arrive on the thruway,
\npulling winged fenders and smiling
\na lane wide\u2014big cars,
\nold floats that took a wrong
\ncorner somewhere and lost
\nthe American dream parade. Around them<\/p>\n

the strange, grilleless
\ncars of the future
\nhum at their tires\u2014tiny aliens
\nof a planet out of gas.<\/p>\n

To think of their long trip
\njust beginning\u2014the irrepressible fuel
\nrising everywhere into their tanks!
\nFor the first time, armrests
\nUnfolded out of seats, [;]
\nOut of the armrests, ashtrays!
\nMaps fell open to the new roads<\/p>\n

That led them, finally, here [– ?]
\nto the right lanes of America,
\nthe antiques of optimism
\nnobody understands or wants
\nexcept the poor. Or dictators<\/p>\n

driving down boulevards in some country
\nwhere the poor do not have cars
\nand run alongside 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 went through the surface
\nof their solid world,
\ncoming to rest among the folded
\nlegs of horses. Listening for him [fig\/bit]<\/p>\n

after all her tears was perhaps
\nwhat drew the mother
\ninto the silence. Long afternoons
\nshe sat with the daughter,
\nspeaking in the sign language
\nthey invented together,
\ngoing 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 man\u2019s name,<\/p>\n

which 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:<\/span> <\/strong><\/em>Responding to Don’s questions about clarity in the opening stanza of “Mute,” I made the changes that appear in the published version of the poem below, also adding his suggested semi-colon to “Big Cars.”<\/p>\n

Read Big Cars<\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>(published version)<\/span><\/p>\n

Read Mute<\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>(published version)<\/span><\/p>\n

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

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

[Click image to view] 30 September 1982 Wes McNair Box 43 North Sutton, NH 03260 Dear Wes, You are really building up a nice group for Joey\u2026 Now it is true that I don\u2019t really understand the literal\/figurative configuration at the beginning of \u201cMute.\u201d And if Howard Moss, Peter Davison, and John Nims are as […]<\/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":[35294,596,42965,35504,42979],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2183"}],"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=2183"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2183\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11373,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2183\/revisions\/11373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}