Letter from James Wright, Minnesota, to W.S. Merwin, 1961 March 18 : typescript signed.

Writing that he is returning the proof and the poem and have waited a couple of days wondering about the title; admitting that "At the end of an afternoon of hunting" is inappropriate for the poem as it stands and that the title is just a sort of notion on when and where the poem was written; announcing that he has been trying to shake his old habits for a long time and in this poem he went too far in the other direction, so he can't find another title; adding that he has multiple poems where he is struggling with titles, where he uses a title to identify the setting of the poem, as it were, rather than as a subject; stating that he will have a few new poems in the Hudson and giving the title for one as "A message hidden in an empty wine bottle that I threw into a gulley of maple trees one night at an indecent hour"; adding that he believes the idea came from the Chinese poems that Roberty Bly and he have been reading; asking his opinion on the title "A late afternoon in western Minnesota" for the enclosed poem; requesting that if Merwin likes it, to write it on the proof sheet; saying that he has found a couple other fairly new poems in a folder and will type them out and send them to Merwin for his opinion; thanking him for his comments on the poem he sent and that he wants to straighten out the Mill Field poem, which he is also unhappy with the ending.