1979 On 1 January, RC and Tess Gallagher begin living together in El Paso. They spend the summer in Chimacum, Washington, on the Olympic Peninsula, near Gallagher’s home town of Port Angeles. In September, RC and Gallagher move to Tucson, where she teaches at the University of Arizona. RC is appointed Professor of English at Syracuse University in Syracuse, New York. He defers the appointment for one year in order to draw on his Guggenheim Fellowship and write.
1980 RC receives a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship for fiction. Because of an unexpected retirement at Syracuse, he begins teaching in January, one semester earlier than planned. From May through August, RC and Gallagher live in a borrowed cabin near Port Angeles. In September, the two move to Syracuse, where Gallagher joins the University as Coordinator of the Creative Writing Program. RC and Gallagher jointly purchase a house in Syracuse.
1981 RC and Gallagher continue their routine of teaching in Syracuse from September to May and summering near Port Angeles. RC’s second major-press story collection, What We Talk about When We Talk about Love, edited by Gordon Lish, is published by Knopf on 20 April. RC makes his first appearance in the New Yorker with the story “Chef’s House”, published on 30 November. Thereafter, he becomes a frequent contributor to the magazine.
1982 During the summer, Gallagher is invited to teach at the University of Zürich, and RC accompanies her to Switzerland. Guest editor John Gardner includes “Cathedral” in The Best American Short Stories 1982. (Gardner dies in a motorcycle accident on 14 September.) RC and his wife, separated since July 1978, are legally divorced on 18 October.
1983 Capra Press publishes Fires: Essays, Poems, Stories on 14 April. On 18 May, the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters awards RC and Cynthia Ozick its first Mildred and Harold Strauss Livings: renewable five-year fellowships that carry annual tax-free stipends of $35,000. (Recipients are chosen by a jury of writers who are members of the Academy: Donald Barthelme, Irving Howe, Philip Roth, and Elizabeth Hardwick.) As a condition of the award, RC resigns his professorship at Syracuse. RC’s third major book of stories, Cathedral, is published by Knopf on 15 September. On 12 December, it receives a National Book Critics Circle Award nomination.
1984 In January, to escape East Coast publicity, RC flies to Port Angeles. Living alone in Sky House, he writes poetry during the day and occasional nonfiction during the evening. In the summer, he and Gallagher make a reading tour of Brazil and Argentina for the US Information Service. In the fall, they return to Syracuse, where Gallagher arranges to teach only one semester each year. Cathedral receives a Pulitzer Prize nomination.
1985 Five of RC’s poems appear in the February issue of Poetry (Chicago). Thereafter, he becomes a frequent contributor. Random House publishes RC’s poetry collection Where Water Comes Together with Other Water on 1 May. RC and Gallagher travel to England, where Fires and The Stories of Raymond Carver are published on 16 May, and to the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland, where he meets many poets. In November, RC receives Poetry magazine’s Levinson Prize.
1986 RC serves as guest editor of The Best American Short Stories 1986. Random House publishes his poetry collection Ultramarine on 7 November. In the winter he travels to Australia.
1987 “Errand”, RC’s last published story, appears in the NewYorker on 1 June. From April to July, RC and Gallagher travel in England, Scotland, and continental Europe, visiting Paris, Wiesbaden, Zürich, Rome, and Milan. In London, Collins Harvill publishes In a Marine Light, a selection of poems from Where Water Comes Together with Other Water and Ultramarine, on 1 June. In September, RC experiences pulmonary hemorrhages, and on 1 October doctors in Syracuse remove two-thirds of his cancerous left lung.
1988 In March, RC’s cancer reappears. During April and May, he undergoes a seven-week course of full-brain radiation treatments in Seattle. Where I’m Calling From, a major collection of his new and selected stories, is published in May by Atlantic Monthly Press. On 18 May, he is inducted into the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. Shortly afterward, cancer reappears in RC’s lungs. He and Gallagher marry in Reno, Nevada, on 17 June. Working together, they assemble A New Path to the Waterfall, and in July they make a fishing trip to Alaska. After a brief stay in Virginia Mason Hospital in Seattle, RC dies at his new house in Port Angeles on 2 August at 6:20 a.m.
Appendix 7
Posthumous Publications
1988 Elephant and Other Stories published in London by Harvill on 4 August.
1989 A New Path to the Waterfall published by Atlantic Monthly Press on 15 June and by Harvill in September.
1990 Conversations with Raymond Carver, a collection of interviews, published by University Press of Mississippi on 31 October. Carver Country: The World of Raymond Carver, with photographs by Bob Adelman and introduction by Tess Gallagher, published by Scribner’s on 14 November.
1991 No Heroics, Please: Uncollected Writings published in London by Harvill in November.
1992 No Heroics, Please published in the US by Vintage Contemporaries on 24 June. Carnations: A Play in One Act published by Engdahl Typography in September.
1993 Where I’m Calling From: The Selected Stories published in London by Harvill in September. Short Cuts: Selected Stories published by Vintage Contemporaries in September and by Harvill in November.
1996 All of Us: The Collected Poems published in London by The Harvill Press in September.
Index of Titles
A Forge, and a Scythe
A Haircut
A Poem Not against Songbirds
A Squall
A Summer in Sacramento
A Tall Order
A Walk
Adultery
Afghanistan
After Rainy Days
After Reading Two Towns in Provence
After the Fire (Chekhov)
Afterglow
Alcohol
All Her Life
An Account
An Afternoon
Anathema
Another Mystery
Artaud
Asia
Ask Him
Aspens
At Least
At Night the Salmon Move
At Noon (Chekhov)
At the Bird Market (Chekhov)
Autumn
Away
Bahia, Brazil
Balsa Wood
Balzac
Bankruptcy
Beginnings
Betrayal
Blood
Bobber
Bonnard’s Nudes
Cadillacs and Poetry
Caution
Cheers
Cherish
Circulation
Commerce
Company
Conspirators
Country Matters
Cutlery
Deschutes River
Distress Sale
Don’t Run (Chekhov)
Downstream (Chekhov)
Drinking While Driving
Eagles
Earwigs
Egress
Elk Camp
Energy
Evening
Extirpation
Fear
Five O’Clock in the Morning (Chekhov)
For Semra, with Martial Vigor
For Tess
For the Egyptian Coin Today, Arden, Thank You
For the Record
Foreboding (Chekhov)
Forever
From the East, Light
from A Journal of Southern Rivers (Wright)
from Epilogue (Lowell)
Gift (Milosz)
Gravy
Grief
Hamid Ramouz (1818—1906)
Happiness
Happiness in Cornwall
Harley’s Swans
Heels
Highway 99E from Chico
His Bathrobe Pockets Stuffed with Notes
Hominy and Rain
Hope
Hummingbird
Hunter
&nbs
p; In a Greek Orthodox Church near Daphne
In a Marine Light near Sequim, Washington
In Switzerland
In the Lobby of the Hotel del Mayo
In the Trenches with Robert Graves
In the Year 2020
Interview
Iowa Summer
Its Course
Jean’s TV
Kafka’s Watch
Late Afternoon, April 8, 1984
Late Fragment
Late Night with Fog and Horses
Lemonade
Let’s Roar, Your Honor (Chekhov)
Letter
Limits
Listening
Loafing
Locking Yourself Out, Then Trying to Get Back In
Looking for Work [1]
Looking for Work [2]
Louise
Luck
Margo
Marriage
Medicine
Memory [1]
Memory [2]
Mesopotamia
Migration
Miracle
Money
Morning, Thinking of Empire
Mother
Movement
Music
My Boat
My Crow
My Dad’s Wallet
My Daughter and Apple Pie
My Death
My Wife
My Work
Near Klamath
Nearly
Next Door
Next Year
Night Dampness (Chekhov)
No Heroics, Please
No Need
Not Far from Here
NyQuil
On an Old Photograph of My Son
On the Pampas Tonight
One More
Our First House in Sacramento
Out
Oyntment to Alure Fish to the Bait (Chetham)
Photograph of My Father in His Twenty-Second Year
Plus
Poem for Dr Pratt, a Lady Pathologist
Poem for Hemingway & W.C. Williams
Poem for Karl Wallenda, Aerialist Supreme
Poem on My Birthday, July 2
Poems
Powder-Monkey
Proposal
Prosser
Quiet Nights
Radio Waves
Rain
Reaching
Reading
Reading Something in the Restaurant
Return
Return to Kraków in 1880 (Milosz)
Rhodes
Rogue River Jet-Boat Trip, Gold Beach, Oregon, July 4, 1977
Romanticism
Scale
Seeds
September
Shiftless
Shooting
Simple
Sinew
Sleeping
Slippers
Smoke and Deception (Chekhov)
Soda Crackers
Some Prose on Poetry
Something Is Happening
Son
Songs in the Distance (Chekhov)
Sorrel (Chekhov)
Sparrow Nights (Chekhov)
Spell
Spring, 480 BC
Still Looking Out for Number One
Stupid
Such Diamonds (Chekhov)
Sudden Rain
Summer Fog
Sunday Night
Suspenders
Sweet Light
Tel Aviv and Life On the Mississippi
The Ashtray
The Attic
The Author of Her Misfortune
The Autopsy Room
The Baker
The Best Time of the Day
The Blue Stones
The Brass Ring
The Car
The Catch
The Caucasus: A Romance
The Child
The Cobweb
The Contact
The Cougar
The Cranes
The Current
The Debate
The Eve of Battle
The Fields
The Fishing Pole of the Drowned Man
The Garden
The Gift
The Grant
The Hat
The House behind This One
The Juggler at Heaven’s Gate
The Jungle
The Kitchen
The Lightning Speed of the Past
The Little Room
The Mail
The Mailman as Cancer Patient
The Man Outside
The March into Russia
The Meadow
The Minuet
The Moon, the Train
The Mosque in Jaffa
The Name (Tranströmer)
The Net
The News Carried to Macedonia
The Offending Eel
The Old Days
The Other Life
The Painter & The Fish
The Party
The Pen
The Phenomenon
The Phone Booth
The Pipe
The Poem I Didn’t Write
The Possible
The Prize
The Projectile
The Rest
The River
The Road
The Schooldesk
The Scratch
The Sensitive Girl
The Sturgeon
The Sunbather, to Herself
The Toes
The Trestle
The White Field
The Window
The Windows of the Summer Vacation Houses
The World Book Salesman
The Young Fire Eaters of Mexico City
The Young Girls
Thermopylae
This Morning
This Room
This Word Love
Those Days
Threat
Through the Boughs
To Begin With
To My Daughter
Tomorrow
Torture
Transformation
Trying to Sleep Late on a Saturday Morning in November
Two Worlds
Union Street: San Francisco, Summer 1975
Venice
Vigil
Waiting
Wake Up
Wenas Ridge
Wes Hardin: From a Photograph
Wet Picture (Seifert)
What I Can Do
What the Doctor Said
What You Need for Painting
What You Need to Know for Fishing (Oliver)
Where the Groceries Went
Where They’d Lived
Where Water Comes Together with Other Water
Wind
Wine
Winter Insomnia
With a Telescope Rod on Cowiche Creek
Woman Bathing
Woolworth’s, 1954
Work
Yesterday
Yesterday, Snow
You Don’t Know What Love Is
Your Dog Dies
Index of First Lines
A break in the clouds. The blue
A crow flew into the tree outside my window
A day so happy, (Milosz)
A few minutes ago, I stepped onto the deck
A girl pushes a bicycle through tall grass
A kind of
A late summer’s day, and my friend on the court
A little quietly outstanding uptown
A little sport-fishing boat
A matinee that Saturday
A storm blew in last night and knocked out
A swank dinner. Food truly wonderful
After rainy days and the same serious doubts
After the winter, grieving and dull
Again the flying horses, the strange voice of drunken Nikanor, (Chekhov)
All day he’d been working like a locomotive
All I know about medicine I picked up
All I want today is to keep an eye on these birds
All that day we banged at geese
Among the hieroglyphs, the masks, the unfinished poems
And did you get what
“and we kept going
Anderson, I thought of you when I loitered
As he passed his father’s room, he glanced in at the door. (Chekhov)
As he writes, without looking at the sea
As I stare at the smoothly worn portrait of
At night the salmon move
At noon we have rain, which washes away the snow, (Chekhov)
At Sportsmen’s Park, near Yakima, I crammed a hook
Awakened this morning by a voice from my childhood
Back at the hotel, watching her loosen, then comb out
Because it was a holiday, they bought a herring at the tavern (Chekhov)
Begin nude, looking for the socks
Behind the dirty table where Kristofferson is having
Between five and seven this evening
Bright mornings
By the time I came around to feeling pain
Call it iron discipline. But for months
Christ broods over our heads
Cigarette smoke hanging on
Clouds hang loosely over this mountain range
Cool summer nights
Cranes lifting up out of the marshland
Cutting the stems from a quart
Down below the window, on the deck, some ragged-looking
Drifting outside in a pall of smoke
Driving lickety-split to make the ferry
Each evening an eagle soars down from the snowy
Early one Sunday morning everything outside
Enraged by what he called
Every man’s life is a mystery, even as
Everyone else sleeping when I step
Everywhere he went that day he walked
Faithless, we have come here
Fear of seeing a police car pull into the drive
First thing to do in Zurich
Forget all experiences involving wincing
Franz Liszt eloped with Countess Marie d’Agoult
From the window I see her bend to the roses
George Mensch’s cattle
Half asleep on top of this bleak landscape
Hanging around the house each day
Happy to have these fish
He arose early, the morning tinged with excitement
He began the poem at the kitchen table
He buried his wife, who’d died in
He holds conversation sacred
He knew he was
He said it doesn’t look good