{"id":2421,"date":"2012-05-10T14:33:12","date_gmt":"2012-05-10T18:33:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/?p=2421"},"modified":"2013-12-17T17:57:50","modified_gmt":"2013-12-17T21:57:50","slug":"mcnair-to-hall-august-18-1983","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/mcnair-to-hall-august-18-1983\/","title":{"rendered":"McNair to Hall: August 18, 1983"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
\"Letter<\/a>\"Letter<\/a>\"Letter<\/a><\/p>\n

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

August 18, 1983<\/p>\n

Dear Don,<\/p>\n

Thought you might want to see Costanzo\u2019s
\nresponse to my letter about the Devins Award.
\nI was awfully pleased with his comments
\nabout the Award, my book and future possibilities
\nat Carnegie-Mellon. (As you know, I am more
\nthan half finished with book II.) Not the best
\nidea, probably, to photocopy someone else\u2019s letter
\nand send it, but I can\u2019t imagine Gerry
\nwould mind my showing it to you.<\/p>\n

Calls back and forth have already begun
\nwith U\/Missouri. Wonderfully enough, they
\nare interested in my ideas about the
\nbook jacket–and other matters of presentation.<\/p>\n

2\/<\/p>\n

I was happy to learn from Greg Martin,
\ntheir sales person, that advertising for the
\nbook, among academic journals and poetry
\nmagazines, will be extensive.<\/p>\n

How wonderful it is to be writing about
\na book<\/span>!<\/p>\n

We will be at your play on August 23.
\nThen there\u2019s that Hale Award! You do make
\nour month busy!<\/p>\n

Love,<\/p>\n

Wes<\/p>\n

P.S. Were you aware that Frost, the first recipient
\nof the Hale Award, wrote a parody of Sarah Josepha
\nHale\u2019s poem, \u201cMary Had a Little Lamb\u201d? (I got
\nthis from Raymond Holden, the poet, who spoke about
\nFrost in Newport before he (Holden) died.):<\/p>\n

\u201cMary had a little lamb;
\nHis name was Jesus Christ.
\nGod, not Joseph, was the ram,
\nBut Joseph acted nice.\u201d
\n–!<\/p>\n

——————————————————
\n482 Queen Anne Road
\nHarwich, MA 02645
\nAugust 15, 1983<\/p>\n

Dear Wes,<\/p>\n

Congratulations! I\u2019m very happy for you even though a bit disappointed
\nthat it won\u2019t be us this time around. I think the Devins is a terrific
\naward. I won it and they published my first book in 1975. A year later
\nthey produced an LP record which featured a reading of mine and the
\nfollowing year\u2019s winner. Ed King and his people have always been more
\nthan kind to me. Missouri\u2019s distribution is much better now that Harper
\n& Row is distributing for them, too.<\/p>\n

The only problem, as you already seem to gather, is that they don\u2019t do
\nany \u201csecond\u201d books by people they begin with. But you\u2019ll find that I\u2019ve
\nbeen rather partial to former Devins winners at Carnegie-Mellon. Winners
\nI\u2019ve published books by are John Calvin Rezmerski, Peter Cooley (not a winner
\nbut a runner-up who they did anyway), Jonathon Holden, and Ed Ochester.<\/p>\n

I might say that as far as I\u2019m concerned your manuscript is the best
\none to win that award in ages (probably since mine, he said humbly) and
\nI\u2019m really pleased. We were to have visited Hall\u2019s this weekend and I
\nwas hoping to meet you, but those plans have fallen through. But have
\nMissouri send me a copy when it is out and we\u2019ll review it in Three<\/span> Rivers<\/span>
\nPoetry<\/span> Journal<\/span>. When I get back to Pittsburgh I\u2019ll send my copy back
\nto you.<\/p>\n

Again, congratulations. This is something you really deserve.<\/p>\n

Yours,<\/p>\n

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

\n

A note from McNair about this letter:<\/span> <\/strong><\/em>Days earlier, I phoned Don to tell him that the poet David Wagoner had selected The Faces of Americans in 1853<\/em> for the 1983 Devins Award (a cash prize of $500, with book publication and a public reading at the University of Missouri). He was as excited as I was.<\/p>\n\n

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

[Click image to view] August 18, 1983 Dear Don, Thought you might want to see Costanzo\u2019s response to my letter about the Devins Award. I was awfully pleased with his comments about the Award, my book and future possibilities at Carnegie-Mellon. (As you know, I am more than half finished with book II.) Not the […]<\/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":[35322,35504,42982,42963,293],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2421"}],"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=2421"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2421\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11142,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2421\/revisions\/11142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}