{"id":3671,"date":"2012-08-08T13:20:27","date_gmt":"2012-08-08T17:20:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/?p=3671"},"modified":"2014-01-20T14:30:28","modified_gmt":"2014-01-20T18:30:28","slug":"hall-to-mcnair-may-17-1984","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/hall-to-mcnair-may-17-1984\/","title":{"rendered":"Hall to McNair, May 17, 1984"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
\"Letter<\/a>\"Letter<\/a>\"Letter<\/a><\/p>\n

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

[Written in top margin:]\u00a0<\/em>Thanks for the Union clip! I had not seen it. A
\nnice piece!<\/p>\n

17 May 1984<\/p>\n

Wesley McNair
\nHominy Pot Rd.
\nNorth Sutton, NH 03260<\/p>\n

Dear Wes,<\/p>\n

I did talk about you down in Washington, used you as my example<\/span>.
\nIt was by and large a boring* ceremonial occasion, and I think I did what
\nI was supposed to do. [Written in margin:]<\/em> *Not your part!<\/p>\n

Good to hear about The Valley News reprinting the article. That
\nis a first cousin to the Concord Monitor, or sibling or something. Mike
\nwent up there and worked as managing editor for a while.<\/p>\n

Thank you for the clarity of your description of the Dartmouth job.
\nExcellent. Maybe I can give you some hints about that introductory creative
\nwriting course. Not so sure I can help without the class in fiction.
\nWonderful. It sounds like fun. Of course, expect nothing<\/span>\u2026 \u201cAnd
\nMithrade<\/del>ates, he died old.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now<\/span> I am a little confused about you and this poem. I send a xerox
\nalong, in case you don\u2019t have a copy of The Alligator Bride (and if you
\ndon\u2019t, I can repair that omission, the next time we see each other.) You
\nsay you like how active the title has become, and the title is the same.
\nBut maybe you just mean that the change in the last stanza has activated
\nthe title. There are little changes in the other stanzas too.<\/p>\n

But it is the switch to \u201cI\u201d is what excited me.<\/p>\n

And now let me tell you a funny story. When I first published that
\npoem in the New Yorker, maybe in 1966, the two lines in the third stanza
\nwere \u201cand every\/ morning takes the train, his pale\/ hands on his black
\ncase, and sits\/\u2026\u201d etc.<\/p>\n

Well, I have been telling a story for years and years now, at poetry
\nreadings, when I have usually read it the revised way, as it is printed in
\nAlligator Bride, and I talked<\/del> to them about revisions and such. I tell them about
\nhow I first wrote it with the train, and then the first person I showed
\nit to, who was Louis Simpson, got all dazed-looking, and said, \u201cBut they
\ndon\u2019t have seat-belts, on trains\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Everybody laughs! And then I say: \u201cBut nobody since has ever made
\nthat mistake.\u201d Well, now I cannot say this anymore! Of course it is not
\n\u201cmaking this mistake,\u201d it is a kind of literalness that I would expect poets
\nto do more than anybody else. Because poets are the most literal-minded
\npeople in the world, which is what makes metaphor work. But if it didn\u2019t
\nconfuse the old New Yorker, how could it confuse you and Louis?<\/p>\n

No, they don\u2019t have seatbelts on trains, and the point is that this
\nguy, though he is an active sort alive at the present time, is really also,
\nat the same time, the skeleton crashed in New Guinea back in 1943\u2026<\/p>\n

2\/<\/p>\n

The reason I took the train out, all those years ago, was that I
\nfeared it looked like social commentary \u2013 the poets running down the commuters
\nagain. And really, I had no such thing in mind: this is how I felt, how
\nalas everybody feels, from time to time. So I wanted to generalize it,
\nso that it could be anybody, and not just a businessman carrying an attache
\ncase\u2026 So I changed it to \u201ctakes his chair, etc.\u201d But I lost that assonance.
\nHaving those four dipthongs on a train\/ pale\/ takes\/ case\u2026 That just kills me.
\nThat to me makes the high point of the poem! For years and years, I have
\nbeen looking for a way to get that assonance back in.<\/p>\n

A few years ago, at a reading, somebody took me to task for not
\nprinting it the original train\/assonance way, and so I have mostly been
\nreading it aloud in the old way. But worried about the social implications.
\nThen I thought that changing it to \u201cI\u201d would help get rid of the social
\nassociations, although that is irrational enough. But I think maybe it does.
\nAnd I get my assonance back!<\/p>\n

However, I am stuck maybe with the smartest people I know thinking
\nthat I think that there are seatbelts on trains\u2026<\/p>\n

Love to you,<\/p>\n

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

\n

Read The Man in the Dead Machine<\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>(published version)<\/span><\/p>\n\n

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

[Click image to view] [Written in top margin:]\u00a0Thanks for the Union clip! I had not seen it. A nice piece! 17 May 1984 Wesley McNair Hominy Pot Rd. North Sutton, NH 03260 Dear Wes, I did talk about you down in Washington, used you as my example. It was by and large a boring* ceremonial […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2341,"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\/3671"}],"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\/2341"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3671"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3671\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11599,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3671\/revisions\/11599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}