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A letter to Norman Macleod from Norman Holmes Pearson # Note- December 29, 1969 Dear Norman- I haven't written as yet the whole story for you of Bob's visit (with me & Catherine Macleod) at the house of Hal Bynner in Santa Fe. It's a complicated, sad, funny, cruel and almost unbelievable story in many ways- I devoted a "chapter" to it, I think, in "functionalized" terms in the unclear get on a horse & Ride.

Norman Holmes Pearson 2731 HGS Yale University, New Haven - CONN 06520 December 23, 1969

With reference to Robert Mealman & writer? Bynner Dec 29th 1969 The MS (a novel of sorts? or something) Get on a Horse & Ride I sent Nesheim a long time ago- Norman

Dear Norm,

I doubt that this will reach you before Christmas with another set of greetings for that day to you all from me, but it can serve as a kind of advanced New Year's wish. I was most grateful for your present to me of a copy of the manuscript "Family of Flying Apart" which I have read with great pleasure and appreciation. I am sending it along to Nesheim so that it will be safe with all of its important annotation along the margins. This has some very good poems in it of which you can take pride. Many of them certainly will be in the collected volume that you will one day have. But more than this promise, the manuscript contains good evidence of my conviction that you are ready to begin writing poems again. You say that poems cannot be written in haste. Or under pressure. We all know that, but when a poem becomes the focus of attention there are moments when one can go toward the line, toward the figure of speech, and toward the strategy of the whole. I don't know how much you ever tried reworking your manuscripts in various drives--each poet has his own method of composition--but you are always so good an editor for other people that I imagine you must be able to edit yourself. Try it anyhow. When I am gone,

to Japan- note by [[NM?] Dec 29, 1969

and it will be impossible for you to send your regular notes and annotations to me, you can write me. as it were, in poems. Since I am the Norman on the other side of our coin, the collection of poems can be your letter to me (which is to say, to yourself).

Kris Hotvedt sent along your annotated copies of my letters to you, so thank her when you write her. These are good ones to have in the collection. I don't mean my letters to you of course but what you have so valuably written in the margins. Equally valuable are the letters between you and McMurray College in Abilene. I had not actually realized that you were giving a reading but had suspected it would be reminiscence of the thirties. However I am sure they were pleased to have you there. Mr. Ackley had written me to say you were going. He sounded like a very good guy,

Note- I also talked about the thirties0 as much as the traffic would bear out there.

I was much interested in Jack Conroy's reference to me. I do indeed remember him well. Actually we met on several occasions on that particular visit of mine to Chicago and wrote for some time after. He gave me some stationery with the heading of "Mortuary Research Association" which I used for some time, and which Dudley Fitts had copied to use in reference to his own reviewing. I like too your story of taking Bob McAlmon to Hal Bynner's. Bob could be charming beyond words at one moment and difficult beyond words at another. I am glad that this was one of his good times. I see later in the same batch that the poems you have been publishing were finished earlier; this doesn't change my mind at all in believing that there are poems that you can do now. I am pleased to think that your letters will still addressed to me as your "conscience"; your poems can be written to your "conscience" also. Your son's letters are excellent. You are lucky to be able to have him in verse so easily with you, and so willingly. Thank you for accepting the Christmas gift in the very spirit in which it was intended. I am sorry it could not be more. -see next page-