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Where Water Comes Together With Other Water: Poems

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Place a copy on the table by your bed and read a poem or two a night. Carver's thoughtful meditations on what he sees, hears and smells in the world around him will help you relax and think good, deep thoughts as you ponder the joys and sorrows of your own life.

I especially like the story-telling method he uses, first describing something he has seen and then -- before you know it -- he's talking in a universal language of the heart and soul. Yes, he writes in a sort of manly-man language that women may not appreciate, but whether he writing of his daughter trying to explain the energy between him and his ex-wife, camping along the Olympic mountain range, or his realization of his own darker deep-down feelings of love and laziness, his poetry is worthy of attention.

Here are some portions of one of his poems that serves as a good example of his skill and style; it's titled, "Happiness":

So early it's still almost dark out.
I'm near the window with coffee,
and the usual early morning stuff
that passes for thought.

When I see the boy and his friend
walking up the road
to deliver the newspaper.
They wear caps and sweaters,
and one boy has a bag over his shoulder.

They are so happy
they aren't saying anything, these boys.
I think if they could, they would take each others' arm....
[five lines are skipped]

Such beauty that for a minute
death and ambition, even love,
doesn't enter into this.
Happiness. It comes on
unexpectedly. And goes beyond,
really, any early morning talk about it.

It is so tragic that such a voice was stilled at only fifty of lung cancer. A Guggenheim Fellow, awarded NEH Grants and nominated for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award and runner-up for the Pulitzer Prize, his three collections of short stories and poetry of this volume serve as present-day evidence in words of the visual dreams he sought to convey.

Highly recommeneded for public and academic library collections and as a gift to those with an open heart seeking greater self-understanding.

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R. Neil Scott
Middle Tennessee State University

Carver can break your heart without seeming to try, and there is that quality in many of these poems. Written in the mid 1980s, in the last years before his death, they are that mix of bittersweet memory, melancholy, and joy taken in the here and now. Living with poet Tess Gallagher in a house overlooking the Strait of Juan de Fuca in Washington (Carver grew up in Yakima, Washington), he writes of the days that pass there, the frequent rains and the boats passing on the water, and he tracks the course of fleeting emotions, often triggered by long-forgotten memories.

He has this ability to discover the extraordinary in the absolute ordinary, and he can bring together ideas with images drawn from everyday life that disturb and shock the heart, as when he recalls an old relationship while describing the drops and smears of blood left in a kitchen sink after gutting fish. As with his stories, these poems are written in plain, conversational language while evoking at the same time the darkly inexpressible. Simple and direct on the surface, they are like being in a small boat on deep waters.

This is fine poetry to start Raymond Carver with. "The Ashtray" demonstrates an excellent portrayal of a selfish man and his girlfriend. "My Daughter's Apple Pie" is probably one of Carver's best works as far as showing his understatement style especially with a serious subject (which, actually, is very common with Carver). The book contains everything: nature, death, love, father/son relationships, water, everything. Carver's death is only a loss if you do not read his work.

These poems have the beauty of life in them. They have real pain and an honest confrontation with whatever it is Carver meets, and tries to contend with. The honesty comes with the brokenness of the life .And there is a sense that the man is telling you what he feels and what he knows and what he has learned from life. And its not an easy life. It has martial discord, and distance between loved ones, and a lot of drinking, and mixed- up relationships. But what I think redeems it and makes the poetry of Carver so appealing is that it too talks genuinely of what is good and meaningful in the life. It can be a phone - call from a brother which connects them remotely again and reminds them of the world they had once together now largely gone. It can be a meditation on a writer ( Machado) which evokes a sense of how Literature can deepen our perception into the world, it can be a lament in understanding a former wife's feelings.
It is simple language and understandable. It tells a story. It has a lot of the disorder of life in it, and the kind of scandalous things most of us would rather do without . It has embarassment and shame and failure and poverty and regret and sorrow and love- much much love. As in the poem in which he takes the time to himself given by his beloved's absence but refuses to do one thing sleep in their common bed without her. It has a rough integrity of a real human being and poet.
This is the real stuff. Enjoy it.

For fans of Raymond Carver, it may seem strange to start with this book of poetry, as I did, rather than with one of his collections of short stories. I can only say that I came away from this work amazed at what this writer was able to do with a short form of writing and determined to rush out and start reading his short stories as well. These are reflective pieces of a man who has experienced and processed much, who has had time to reflect on the true essentials of life. While these poems are beautifully and artfully written, they are filled with universal messages that will reach, touch and change every reader. The title poem alone, with its theme of personal growth, is worth the price of the book. This is poetry for every man (and woman) written by someone who was clearly not.

Just picked up this book for my dad for father's day. Of course, it was impossible not to dip in and sample some of the poems. They are really neat - touch a chord that resonates beautifully.

He work is very clear. The words transform the writers memories into the readers memories. I highly recommend My Dad's Wallet and Woolworths 1954.