Raymond Carver

"I love the swift leap of a good story, the excitement that often commences in the first sentence, the sense of beauty and mystery found in the best of them; and the fact - so crucially important to me back at the beginning and now still a consideration - that the story can be written and read in one sitting. (Like poems!) (from foreword in Where I'm Calling From, 1998)


"I feel depressed. But I won't go into it with her. I've already told her too much.
She sits there waiting, her dainty fingers poking her hair.
Waiting for what? I'd like to know.
It is August.
My life is going to change - I feel it."
(from 'Fat' in Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?, 1976)
Much of what Carver wrote about was based on his own experiences in the Pacific Northwest. "... everything we write is, in some way, autobiographical," he has said. Carver depicted the quiet desperation of the white- and blue-collar workers, salesmen, waitresses, and their sense of betrayal and unableness to express themselves. Things are frequently left unspoken and conflicts unresolved, and the meaning of the story is only revealed through implications.

Carver's poetry was written in the vernacular lyric-narrative mode of William Carlos Williams and Charles Bukowski. Although Carver began as a poet, he once confessed that he is not a "born" poet, and when he had to make a choice, he came down on the side of fiction. However, in 1984 Carver returned to Pacific Northwest and published two collections of poetry, WHERE WATER COMES TOGETHER WITH OTHER WATER (1985) and ULTRAMARINE (1986). He shared the 1985 Levinson Prize for these books.

And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.
(from 'Last Fragment')