{"id":3810,"date":"2012-08-14T12:07:10","date_gmt":"2012-08-14T16:07:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/?p=3810"},"modified":"2013-11-06T16:40:56","modified_gmt":"2013-11-06T20:40:56","slug":"hall-to-mcnair-august-21-1984","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/hall-to-mcnair-august-21-1984\/","title":{"rendered":"Hall to McNair, August 21, 1984"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
\"Letter<\/a>\"Letter<\/a><\/p>\n

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

21 August 1984<\/p>\n

Wes McNair
\nSutton, NH 03260<\/p>\n

Dear Wes,<\/p>\n

Many thanks for the good letter \u2013 and the good last one. You
\nwere not unclear. One is thick<\/span> about understanding the objections to
\none\u2019s poem! Well, this one<\/span> is, anyway. And then maybe I have a defense
\nof a poem which might be like yours, but I cannot be sure it will be like
\nyours, unless you make it \u2013 as with the Ragpicker. You know, I was just
\nreading those lines of Frost\u2019s last night, before I got your poem this
\nmorning. I\u2019m really glad you like that poem. There may be only two of
\nus! Well, I think Jane makes three of us.<\/p>\n

I had not been thinking about nursery rhyme. It makes me like the
\npoem better, to think of it as you think of it. Thank you!<\/p>\n

Have you shown that poem to anybody? I have a half-idea of selling
\nthe metrical poems as Joey\u2019s. What do you think of that notion? I mean
\nto say, eventually I could print them as my own \u2013 if I was ready at that
\ntime to blow Joey\u2019s cover. Or for that matter I could claim that I had
\ngiven them to Joey to print as his own\u2026<\/p>\n

I<\/span> was in Richard, not you. I felt<\/span> him as high school age,
\nand without noticing it I made him younger \u2013 especially with the word
\n\u201cbabysitter.\u201d Everything rides on the words chosen at the end and the
\nsequence of them. You have helped me a great deal. It is possible I
\nmight co<\/del>include a tentative, interim version with this letter \u2013 I will
\nsee what it looks like when it comes back from Lois! More likely I
\nwill show you another version of this and of others in a later letter.
\n[Written in margin<\/em>]: nope<\/p>\n

It is possible that I cannot write the poem I attempted to write
\nthere \u2013 and I may then try to write the poem that you were thinking I
\nwas trying to write. Or that I partly slipped into. But as of now,
\nwith your help, I am working on what I thought I was doing in the first
\nplace.<\/p>\n

It has been subject and object and then it has been subject again\u2026
\nchanging every day.<\/p>\n

The one question I don\u2019t think you exactly answered in this letter,
\nis why<\/span> \u201ctwenty-five years old forever\u201d detracts from \u201cthe wrinkled and
\npuffed skin in the watery chair.\u201d After you wrote that, I have noticed
\nthat the \u201ctwenty-five years\u201d is almost repeated a couple of lines later
\nwith \u201cthirty years\u201d \u2013 and I decided that maybe there were too many years
\naround. What do you think? Or do you now think that \u201ctwenty-five years
\nold forever\u201d is right and necessary? At the moment, I seem to miss it a
\nbit, when I cut it out\u2026 just fiddling with things in there.<\/p>\n

I love the sounds you make. I pay some conscious attention to making
\nsounds \u2013 but the best sounds I make are unconscious, and they always turn<\/p>\n

2\/<\/p>\n

out to be the high points of the poem \u2013 but I think that I get into
\nhigh sounds (for me, especially repeated dipthongs) because of the
\nexcitement of the poem; and not the other way around. I think of the
\nin and out, the up and down of excited sounds in something like
\nNames of Horses. Quite unconscious.<\/p>\n

But in the long process of working on a poem, I will occasionally
\nget conscious \u2013 I will see that there are three of a dipthong\u2026I will
\nlook around and see if I can add a fourth.<\/p>\n

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

\n

 <\/p>\n\n

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

[Click image to view] 21 August 1984 Wes McNair Sutton, NH 03260 Dear Wes, Many thanks for the good letter \u2013 and the good last one. You were not unclear. One is thick about understanding the objections to one\u2019s poem! Well, this one is, anyway. And then maybe I have a defense of a poem […]<\/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\/3810"}],"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=3810"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3810\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10666,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3810\/revisions\/10666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}