Ultramarine [Hardcover]

Raymond Carver (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 12, 1986

"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."
--New York Times Book Review

"Carver's gifts as a storyteller shine through his poetry.... Sometimes a Carver poem also works as a short story, with all its elements--character, diction, place, event--compressed intact into the brevity of verse. And sometimes Carver delivers the goods in pure lyrical form, in words as full of yearning and sensibility as those of a very young man, but poems possessing the hard-won qualities of focus, stillness and irony only rewarded by experience."
--Los Angeles Times


From the Trade Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Carver's poignant, soul-searching mini-narratives about deathinterspersed with descriptions of natural beautyare a test of relationships between parents and between lovers, a projection of a shattered family of man onto a screen before which the poet stands angry and amazed. "Attached/ to this world by nothing more than hope," the poet confronts each poem's episode of pain buoyed up by "the workings of comfort." His mind dwells on varieties of humiliationhaving his eardrum broken by a frozen snowball, working in an autopsy room where a man's "vital organs/lay in a pan beside his head," having earwigs crawl out of a rum cake. Yet he is resolved not to despair but to see these events as a part of "So much that is mysterious . . . happening out there." Frank Allen, Assoc. Dean, Continuing Education, Allentown Coll., Center Valley, Pa.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From the Inside Flap

"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."
--New York Times Book Review

"Carver's gifts as a storyteller shine through his poetry.... Sometimes a Carver poem also works as a short story, with all its elements--character, diction, place, event--compressed intact into the brevity of verse. And sometimes Carver delivers the goods in pure lyrical form, in words as full of yearning and sensibility as those of a very young man, but poems possessing the hard-won qualities of focus, stillness and irony only rewarded by experience."
--Los Angeles Times


From the Trade Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 140 pages
• Publisher: Random House; 1 edition (September 12, 1986)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0394553799
• ISBN-13: 978-0394553795
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.7 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,920,142 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Raymond Carver was born in Clatskanie, Oregon, in 1938. His father was a saw-mill worker and his mother was a waitress and clerk. He married early and for years writing had to come second to earning a living for his young family. Despite, small-press publication, it was not until Will You Please Be Quiet Please? appeared in 1976 that his work began to reach a wider audience. This was the year in which he gave up alcohol, which had contributed to the collapse of his marriage. In 1977 he met the writer Tess Gallagher, with whom he shared the last eleven years of his life. During this prolific period he wrote three collections of stories, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, Cathedral and Elephant. Fires, a collection of essays, poems and stories, appeared in 1985, followed by three further collections of poetry. In 1988 he completed the poetry collection A New Path to the Waterfall.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful book of poetry, September 6, 2000

By 

Michael Park "MonkeyBonkey" (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Ultramarine: Poems (Paperback)

Ultramarine by Raymond Carver, a collection of his poetry, is a gem. With each of my moves I find myself discarding all of my books except for this one. This is the one I hold and keep returning to.

While Carver is better known for his short stories, I think it's his poems that communicates his silent emotions. The sparse language of Raymond Carver that is so effective in his short stories is even more powerful in his poetry.

If there is anything I would ever recommend, this is it.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars He tells what he sees, April 5, 2005

By 

Shalom Freedman "Shalom Freedman" (Jerusalem,Israel) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Ultramarine: Poems (Paperback)

He tells what he sees
and what he experiences
it can be Bonnard's life story
in paintings of his wife
it can be his own effort to see the sea and the sky
and not let his mind intervene
he tells and usually what he tells
is a story
and the stories are interesting stories ironic stories
of his own life
and his need to change it
to plunge into clear water
as his father did
or to write with a sharp clear pen
like Kafka
after eight hours too many looking at his watch in the office
he writes these poems and tells these stories
and we reading them become more alive to the life in us
how strange and more real.

5.0 out of 5 stars crystal, common, intense, and familiar, February 20, 2011

By 

Raymond L. Heinrich (TX USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ultramarine: Poems (Paperback)

A wonderful book. Carver's poems (not just this book) are crystal, common, intense, and familiar. They possess all the clear reality of his short stories. The problem with his poems isn't his poems; it's the people who come to them by way of his short stories and, as scandalous as this may seem, do not like poetry. But if you do: oh my!