{"id":2521,"date":"2012-05-10T16:01:38","date_gmt":"2012-05-10T20:01:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/?p=2521"},"modified":"2013-12-18T22:07:57","modified_gmt":"2013-12-19T02:07:57","slug":"hall-to-mcnair-march-13-1984","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/hall-to-mcnair-march-13-1984\/","title":{"rendered":"Hall to McNair: March 13, 1984"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
\"Letter<\/a>\"Letter<\/a><\/p>\n

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

13 March 1984
\nWes McNair
\nSutton, NH 03260<\/p>\n

[Written in margin]: He called this
\nafternoon + left a
\nmessage on the
\ntape.<\/p>\n

Dear Wes,<\/p>\n

Thanks so much for your help last Friday night. What a nit!
\nWhat a bunch of nits\u2026 Really, the postponement is a great help
\nto me \u2013 and so I should not be annoyed. I am<\/span> annoyed, but that is
\npartly my own compulsiveness, my own aggressive thoughtfulness, whereby,
\nfrequently, if I know it is going to take me a week before I can really
\nanswer a long letter, I will write somebody a postcard saying I won\u2019t
\nanswer you for a week\u2026and now these people! Ugh.<\/p>\n

I think your notion about Dick Eberhart, as a source of the
\nmoney-terror, may well be accurate. He gets everything mixed up.
\nIt would not be any awful malice on his part\u2026 If he did it, I forgive
\nhim. In general, that business just amuses me anyway. The business
\nabout my outrageous fees.<\/p>\n

I like \u201cThe Shooting\u201d very very much indeed. I would put a comma
\nafter \u201clike his,\u201d first line of last stanza\u2026and I think you really
\nneed it. It is a very very good one. No problems. Would this be the
\nfirst of a new bunch for Joey? Will there be more soon? Old Howard
\nwill go on his vacation before terribly long\u2026 Are there others that
\nI am not thinking of? Things are a little rattly, up in the head, just
\nnow!<\/p>\n

And thank you for your long March 3rd letter about the poems.<\/p>\n

I guess I am going to go against your advice, with \u201cThe Day I was
\nOlder.\u201d Did you go back and look at the old version of the day itself,
\nor are you remembering it? If you looked at the old version, sometime
\nwhen you have a moment xerox it for me and send it back to me.<\/p>\n

I do not reject your advice lightly. But you will find me probably
\nnot taking much, and there is a reason: these things have<\/span> gone three or
\nfour hundred drafts, and in a way they are out of my hands. When your
\nadvice would coincide with the advice of one other person, or surely two
\nother people, I would definitely follow it. Because I no longer can
\ntell the difference. But (as with this poem) when it doesn\u2019t, I am
\nnot able to think about it anymore. But I do thank you. And mind you,
\nI keep remembering what you said, and in the future I may do something
\nabout it. Poems are never finished.<\/p>\n

I am working again on the last three lines of that poem. You do
\nnot mention those\u2026but several people have. Some people love it, and
\nothers hate it. I had some very articulate notions about it from one
\nperson in particular, which has got me going back to it.<\/p>\n

I do indeed wonder with you about Jack and the Beanstalk in the
\nNew Animals. You are the first to mention it. But it was on my mind!
\nIt was an addition.<\/p>\n

2\/<\/p>\n

Funny. Acorns appeal(ed) to everybody who first saw it \u2013 and now
\ntwo or three people don\u2019t like it so much. So it is now a question
\nfor me \u2013 do I leave it in the book or do I leave it out? I don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t really follow you about The Granite State. If you have
\ntime and the inclination, you could write me more about it.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m terribly glad that you liked \u201cAnother Elegy.\u201d<\/p>\n

That poem has <\/del>is tremendously integrated. This is the kind of thing
\nI can do by doing four hundred drafts\u2026 And only<\/span> by doing that many \u2013
\nthough I think it is probably a substitute for the inspirations of youth
\nand the fires of same. But it might be better, even if it is a substitute.
\nIt is so damned integrated, that it is very hard for me to think of
\ncutting out parts. The cross references get down to the level of prefixes.<\/p>\n

You tell me that you don\u2019t like parts three and nine so much, the
\nparenthetical parts, but you don\u2019t really tell me why. More!<\/p>\n

I saw the New Hampshire Times article, and was very pleased to see
\nit. Because I know such things can be upsetting, have more or less kept
\nit away from Jane, and I don\u2019t think she will probably ever see it. So
\nwe have solved that one. I think.<\/p>\n

Old Peter just took a poem of mine also, by the way, my Baseball
\nPlayers, of which I guess I did not send you a recent version.<\/p>\n

Thanks so much for the help with the dumb old Poetry Society.<\/p>\n

Best as ever,<\/p>\n

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

\n

A note from McNair about this letter:<\/strong><\/em><\/span>\u00a0Don means to say in his first paragraph that when Pralle of the Poetry Society requested a resume from him, he wrote to say he’d send one in a week, though his thoughtfulness in doing so was lost on them. Now the ceremony for a new poet laureate would have to be postponed. Complicating Don’s appointment as poet laureate was Richard Eberhart’s fear that Don would charge New Hampshire audiences too much money for his readings…. “Old Peter” in the next-to-last paragraph is Peter Davison of The Atlantic<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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

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

[Click image to view] 13 March 1984 Wes McNair Sutton, NH 03260 [Written in margin]: He called this afternoon + left a message on the tape. Dear Wes, Thanks so much for your help last Friday night. What a nit! What a bunch of nits\u2026 Really, the postponement is a great help to me \u2013 […]<\/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":[60366,596,42965,35504,77589],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2521"}],"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=2521"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2521\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11411,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2521\/revisions\/11411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}