Willa Cather to Isabelle McClung
Zack Rogow
New York City, December 12, 1906
My Darling Izzie,
This city is so different from the West,
where the land tints
and weathers the people.
Or rather, everyone here is shaped
by a land somewhere else.
In that sense, I resemble the New Yorkers.
I start to view Nebraska
differently. The faces I grew up with
begin to soften and meld
into characters.
Izzie—it is not too late.
You can still believe your heart
and join me here.
I will always be grateful to the Judge and your mother
for letting me live under their roof,
but our true life became an invalid there,
shut into our room upstairs.
Here in New York
is where our love can have its primavera.
We could encircle ourselves
with friends, books, and maybe a brooding armoire.
How odd that a Nebraska woman like me
should find more elbow room
in a studio flat in Manhattan!
My dear, dear, Izzie—
when you take down your dark tresses
and they plummet over your shoulders,
your bosom—why were you so peevish
last time I visited?
You insisted on backing up
that perfect idiot Dick Collins
in his adulation of Madame Bovary.
If he wants to meet an “ideal female,”
he should work one day
by the side of Slovak farm woman in Nebraska.
Don’t you know
everything I’ve written has been for you?
You are my voice coach,
the one who taught me
to reach the high notes.
I mean to have a home here
where I can write the books
jostling to get out of me.
I wish to taste that with you.
The truth is I’m so
lonesome here in this big
slush of a city.
Come to me, Izzie.
Let our lives be two pages facing.
But know that, even if you stay
in Pittsburgh, as you claim you must,
I will remain forever,
Your loving friend,
Willa
The novelist Willa Cather had a relationship of many years with Isabelle McClung, daughter of a Pittsburgh judge. The McClung family burned their correspondence after Cather’s death.
Zack Rogow is the author, editor, or translator of more than twenty books or plays. His memoir, Hugging My Father’s Ghost, was released by Spuyten Duyvil Publishing in 2024. Zack’s ninth book of poems, Irreverent Litanies, was published by Regal House. His most recent play, Colette Uncensored, had its first staged reading at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC, and ran in London, Indonesia, Catalonia, San Francisco, and Portland. Zack’s blog, Advice for Writers, features more than 280 posts on topics of interest to writers. www.zackrogow.com
