He slept on his hands
He took a room in a port city with a fellow
He was never the same, they said, after that
Her brain is an attic where things
Here is the poem I was going to write
Here my assurance drops away. I lose
His former wife called while he was in the south
His name was Tug. Hers, Margo
His wife. Forty years he painted her
His wife died, and he grew old
How much do writers make? she said
I am sick and tired of the river, the stars (Chekhov)
I ask her and then she asks me. We each
I didn’t want to use it at first
I don’t know the names of flowers
I exchange nervous glances
I fished alone that languid autumn evening
I go to sleep on one beach
I got sleepy while driving and pulled in under a tree (Tranströmer)
I had forgotten about the quail that live
“I have a foreboding.… I’m oppressed (Chekhov)
I have a job with a tiny salary of 80 crowns, and
I have always wanted brook trout
I lay down for a nap. But every time I closed my eyes
I lean over the balcony of the minaret
I look up and see them starting
I looked into the room a moment ago
I love creeks and the music they make
“I only have two hands,”
I opened the old spiral notebook to see what I’d been
I see an empty place at the table
I spent years, on and off, in academe
I stalked a cougar once in a lost box-canyon
I think of Balzac in his nightcap after
I took a walk on the railroad track
I wade through wheat up to my belly
I waded, deepening, into the dark water
I want to get up early one more morning
I was nearsighted and had to get up close
I was nine years old
I went out for a minute and
I will not go when she calls
I woke up feeling wiped out. God knows
I woke up with a spot of blood
I’m not the man she claims. But
I’ve always wanted brook trout
I’ve wasted my time this morning, and I’m deeply ashamed
If I’m lucky, I’ll be wired every whichway
Imagine a young man, alone, without anyone
In a little patch of ground beside
In air heavy
In June, in the Kyborg Castle, in the canton
In order to be able to live
In our cabin we eat breaded oysters and fries
In the garden, small laughter from years ago
In the living room Walter Cronkite
In the meadow this afternoon, I fetch
In the trailer next to this one
In those days we were going places. But that Sunday
In winter two kinds of fields on the hills
it gets run over by a van
It was a glorious morning. The sun was shining brightly and (Chekhov)
It was a night like all the others. Empty
It was a sixteen-inch ling cod that the eagle
It’s 1974 again, and he’s back once more. Smirking
It’s afternoon when he takes off
It’s August and I have not
It’s either this or bobcat hunting
It’s good to live near the water
It’s too late now to put a curse on you—wish you
Just when he had given up thinking
Last night, alone, 3000 miles away from the one
Last night at my daughter’s, near Blaine
Last night I dreamt a priest came to me
“Lately I’ve been eating a lot of pork
Left off the highway and
Lighten up, songbirds. Give me a break
like bad credit
Long before he thought of his own death
Love of work. The blood singing
Make use of the things around you
Mark the man I am with
Mom said I didn’t have a belt that fit and
My boat is being made to order. Right now it’s about to leave
My dad is at the stove in front of a pan with brains
My life’s on an even keel
My mother calls to wish me a Merry Christmas
My wife has disappeared along with her clothes
My wife is in the other half of this mobile home
Naches River. Just below the falls
Nadya, pink-cheeked, happy, her eyes shining with tears (Chekhov)
Narrow-bodied, iron head like the flat side
New snow onto old ice last night. Now
No other word will do. For that’s what it was. Gravy
No sleep. Somewhere near here in the woods, fear
Not far from here someone
Now that you’ve gone away for five days
October. Here in this dank, unfamiliar kitchen
On my desk, a picture postcard from my son
On the banks of the
On the Columbia River near Vantage
On the pampas tonight a gaucho
Once
One minute I had the windows open
Out of the black mouth of the big king
Out on the Strait the water is whitecapping
Rain hisses onto stones as old men and women
Reading a life of Alexander the Great, Alexander
Reluctantly, my son goes with me
Seeing the child again
September, and somewhere the last
She gave me the car and two
She lays her hand on his shoulder
She serves me a piece of it a few minutes
She slumps in the booth, weeping
Shortly after three p.m. today a squall
Snow began falling late last night. Wet flakes
So early it’s still almost dark out
So I returned here from the big capitals, (Milosz)
So many impossible things have already
Something is happening to me
Suppose I say summer
Sweetheart, please send me the notebook I left
Take Mans Fat and Cats Fat, of each half an Ounce (Chetham)
Talking about myself all day
Talking about her brother, Morris, Tess said
That first week in Santa Barbara wasn’t the worst thing
That painting next to the brocaded drapery
That time I tagged along with my dad to the dry cleaners
The afternoon was already dark and unnatural
The angler’s coat and trowsers should be of cloth (Oliver)
The car with a cracked windshield
The dusk of evening comes on. Earlier a little rain
The entire household suffered
The fishing in Lough Arrow is piss-poor
The four of us sitting around that afternoon
The girl in the lobby reading a leather-bound book
The girl minding the store
The gondolier handed you a rose
The house rocked and shouted all night
The latin winds of Majorca
The little bald old man, General Zhukov’s cook, the very one (Chekhov)
The mallard ducks are down
The man who took 38 steelhead out
The mind can’t sleep, can only lie awake and
The moon, the landscape, the train
The next poem I write will have firewood
The nights are very unclear here
THE PALETTE
The papal nuncio, John Burchard, writes calmly
The paperboy shakes me awake. “I have been dreaming you’d come”
The pen that told the truth
The people who were better than us were comfortable
The sad music of roads lined with larches
The seasons turning. Memory flaring
The two brothers, Sleep and Death, they unblinkingly called
The wind is level now. But pails of rain
The woman asked us in for pie. Started
Then I was young and had the strength of ten
Then Pancho Villa came to town
There are five of us in the tent, not counting
There are terrible nights with thunder, lightning, rain, and (Chekhov)
There is no deceiving the bird-fancier. He sees and Chekhov)
There was a great reckoning
There was always the inside and
These fish have no eyes
They fill their mouths with alcohol
They promised an unforgettable trip
They waited all day for the sun to appear. Then
They were in the living room. Saying their
They withheld judgment, looking down at us
They’re alone at the kitchen table in her friend’s
They’re on a one-way flight, bound from LAX
They’ve come every day this month
This afternoon the Mississippi
This foot’s giving me nothing
This is the fourth day I’ve been here
This morning I began a poem on Hamid Ramouz
This morning I remembered the young man
This morning I woke up to rain
This morning I’m torn
This morning was something. A little snow
This much is clear to me now—even then
This old woman who kept house for them
This rain has stopped, and the moon has come out
This room for instance
This sky, for instance
This yardful of the landlord’s used cars
Those beautiful days (Seifert)
3 fat trout hang
Through the open window he could see a flock of ducks (Chekhov)
To scream with pain, to cry, to summon help, to call (Chekhov)
To sleep and forget everything for a few hours
Today a woman signaled me in Hebrew
Toward evening the wind changes. Boats
Trolling the coho fly twenty feet behind the boat
Trying to write a poem while it was still dark out
Turning through a collection
Twenty-eight, hairy belly hanging out
Vodka chased with coffee. Each morning
Waking before sunrise, in a house not my own
Walking around on our first day
Water perfectly calm. Perfectly amazing
we have been looking at cars lately
We press our lips to the enameled rim of the cups
We sipped tea. Politely musing
We stand around the burning oil drum
We were five at the craps table
What a rough night! It’s either no dreams at all
What lasts is what you start with (Wright)
Whatever became of that brass ring
When after supper Tatyana Ivanovna sat quietly down (Chekhov)
When he came to my house months ago to measure
When his mother called for the second time
When my friend John Dugan, the carpenter
When you were little, wind tailed you
Where this floated up from, or why
Which of us will be left then
Woke up early this morning and from my bed
Woke up feeling anxious and bone-lonely
Woke up this morning with
Years ago—it would have been 1956 or 1957—when I was a
Yes I remember those days
Yesterday I dressed in a dead man’s
Yesterday, snow was falling and all was chaos
Yet why not say what happened (Lowell)
You are falling in love again. This time
You are served “duck soup” and nothing more. But you (Chekhov)
You are writing a love scene
You don’t know what love is Bukowski said
You simply go out and shut the door
You soda crackers! I remember
You’d dozed in front of the TV
Your delicious-looking rum cake, covered with
Zhivago with a fine moustache
RAYMOND CARVER
Raymond Carver was born in Clatskanie, Oregon, in 1938. His first collection of stories, Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? (a National Book Award nominee in 1977), was followed by What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, Cathedral (nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in 1984), and Where I’m Calling From in 1988, when he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He died in August of that year, shortly after completing the poems of A New Path to the Waterfall.
ALSO BY
RAYMOND CARVER
CALL IF YOU NEED ME
Call If You Need Me traces the arc of Carver’s career, not in the widely anthologized stories that have become classics, but through his uncollected fiction and his essays. Here are the five “last” stories, discovered a decade after Carver’s death. Here also are Carver’s first published story, the fragment of an unfinished novel, and all his nonfiction—from a recollection of his father to reflections on writers as varied as Anton Chekhov and Donald Barthelme. Call If You Need Me invites us to travel with a singular artist, step by step, as he discovers what is worth saying and how to say it so it pierces the heart.
Fiction/Literature
CATHEDRAL
“A dozen stories that overflow with the danger, excitement, mystery and possibility of life.… Carver is a writer of astonishing compassion and honesty … his eye set only on describing and revealing the world as he sees it. His eye is so clear, it almost breaks your heart” (Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post Book World).
Fiction/Literature
FIRES
More than sixty stories, poems, and essays are included in this wide-ranging collection by the amazingly gifted and versatile Raymond Carver. Two of the stories—later revised for What We Talk About When We Talk About Love—are particularly notable in that between the first and final versions, we see clearly the astounding process of Carver’s literary development.
Fiction/Poetry/Essays
SHORT CUTS
The works of fiction—nine stories and one poem—collected in this volume form the basis of an astonishingly original film directed by Robert Altman. These now-classic stories, when read together, form a searing and indelible portrait of American innocence and loss. With deadpan humor and enormous tenderness, the film Short Cuts reinvents and dramatizes them as only an artist of Altman’s caliber could, giving new insight into the work of “one of the true contemporary masters” (The New York Review of Books).
Fiction/Literature
WHAT WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT LOVE
In his second collection of stories, as in his first, Carver’s characters are peripheral people—people without education, insight, or prospects, people too unimaginative to even give up. Carver celebrates these men and women.
Fiction/Literature
WHERE I’M CALLING FROM
Carver’s last collection encompasses classic stories from Cathedral, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, and earlier Carver volumes, along with seven works previously unpublished in book form. Together, these thirty-seven stories give us a superb overview of Carver’s life work and show us why he was so widely imitated but never equaled.
Fiction/Literature
WILL YOU PLEASE BE QUIET, PLEASE?
With this, his first collection of stories, Raymond Carver breathed new life into the American short story and instantly became the recognized master of the form. Carver shows us the humor and tragedy that dwell in the hearts of ordinary people. His stories are the classics of our time.
Fiction/Literature
ALL OF US
Although he won his greatest acclaim as a writer of short stories, Raymond Carver began his career as a poet, and he continued to write poetry until his death in 1988. With this stunningly rich collection, the full extent of his achievement is finally evident. The more than three hundred poems in All of Us possess all the virtues of Carver’s fiction: a keen attention to the physical world; an uncanny ability to compress vast feeling into discreet moments; a voice of conversational intimacy; and an unstinting sympathy for “all of us, all of us, all of us / trying to save / our immortal souls.” This edition brings together all the poems of Carver’s four previous books, along with those posthumously published in No Heroics, Please. It also contains bibliographical and textual notes on individual poems; a chronology of Carver’s life and work; and a moving introduction by Carver’s widow, the poet Tess Gallagher.
Poetry
ULTRAMARINE
“Mr. Carver is heir to that most appealing American poetic voice, the lyricism of Theodore Roethke and James Wright.… This book is a treasure, one to return to. No one’s brevity is as rich, as complete, as Raymond Carver’s” (The New York Times Book Review).
Poetry
WHERE WATER COMES TOGETHER WITH OTHER WATER
A vast collection of poems that won Poetry magazine’s Levinson Prize. “Somehow the nuances of daily experience, the warmth, humor, and reflection the poet brings to subjects are quite unlike anyone else’s” (Joseph Parisi).
Poetry
VINTAGE CONTEMPORARIES
Available wherever books are sold.
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