All I Could Drink

By his own admission, Raymond Carver more or less gave up writing at one point and took to full-time drinking. Working different jobs, rearing children, and trying to write, he was drinking heavily by the age of thirty. Five years later, while an instructor at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop Carver recalled that it was less teaching than drinking and almost no writing. Leaving Iowa, the drinking continued for another three years. It was serious enough in 1977 for the writer to be hospitalized four different times for acute alcoholism. On June 2, 1977 with the help of Alcoholics Anonymous he stopped drinking and began a second life. That same year he received a National Book Award nomination for Will You Please Be Quiet, Please. He later said he would have died of alcoholism at the age of forty if he hadn’t found a way to stop drinking, often talking as if his second birthday were June 2, 1977. He conquered alcohol but died of lung cancer at the age of fifty.

Carver examined a great many themes in his poems and stories, but the grind of poverty, the collapse of love and the ruin of alcohol were prominent among them. The alcohol especially, and we get a glimpse of how early it began in his autobiographical poem “Luck.” The poem’s first appearance was in a 1979 issue of the literary magazine Kayak 50. It is included in Carver’s posthumous book, All of Us: The Collected Poems.

A boy wakes to an empty house and the leftovers of his parents’ party…

LUCK

I was nine years old.

I had been around liquor

all my life. My friends

drank too, but they could handle it.

We’d take cigarettes, beer,

a couple of girls

and go out to the fort.

We’d act silly.

Sometimes you’d pretend

to pass out so the girls

could examine you.

They’d put their hands

down your pants while

you lay there trying

not to laugh, or else

they would lean back,

close their eyes, and

let you feel them all over.

Once at a party my dad

came to the back porch

to take a leak.

We could hear voices

over the record player

see people standing around

laughing and drinking.

When my dad finished

he zipped up, stared a while

at the starry sky—it was

always starry then

on summer nights—

and went back inside.

The girls had to go home.

I slept all night in the fort

with my best friend.

We kissed on the lips

and touched each other.

I saw the stars fade

toward morning.

I saw a woman sleeping

on our lawn.

I looked up her dress,

then I had a beer

and a cigarette.

Friends, I though this

was living.

Indoors, someone

had put out a cigarette

in a jar of mustard.

I had a straight shot

from the bottle, then

a drink of warm collins mix,

then another whisky.

And though I went from room

to room, no one was home.

What luck, I thought.

Years later,

I still wanted to give up

friends, love, starry skies,

for a house where no one

was home, no one coming back,

and all I could drink.

The Places to Fish

Another of those rain drenched, wind whipped days at the beach which had all signs of a tropical storm but one that hasn’t excited the attention of meteorologists. As if operating on pulleys and guidelines, the same patio chair lifted off at some time in the night and flew in a beeline to smash again the same walkway light it crumpled one night earlier. Been trying to figure out how to explain that coincidence to the handyman charged with such repairs. Too much weather for venturing out of doors, so Saturday passed under the reading lamp with occasional breaks to stare out at the storm tossed ocean of mostly white froth, a thin band of gray-green below the murky horizon the only sight of unruffled water.

Maybe influenced by the weather, maybe not, but for a while in the afternoon an old book of Raymond Carver poems provided distraction from the noisy weather. I make the connection because a fair portion of the poems I read today have a dark underside that border on storms of another kind. On two earlier occasions I’ve posted poems by Carver, both times from the same book, All of Us. It is a posthumous collection arranged and edited by Tess Gallagher and first published in 1996 eight years after Carver’s death.

The poem titled, “In the Lobby of the Hotel del Mayo” Craver wrote in 1985 and speaks of an unexplained event or phenomenon that disturbs a bland and hot Sunday afternoon in a tropical hotel lobby. We are no wiser after the final two lines which describe more often than not the moments between humdrum and tragedy.

IN THE LOBBY OF THE HOTEL DEL MAYO

The girl in the lobby reading a leather-bound book.

The man in the lobby using a broom.

The boy in the lobby watering plants.

The desk clerk looking at his nails.

The woman in the lobby writing a letter.

The old man in the lobby sleeping in his chair.

The fan in the lobby revolving slowly overhead.

Another hot Sunday afternoon.

Suddenly, the girl lays her finger between the pages of

her book.

The man leans on his broom and looks.

The boy stops in his tracks.

The desk clerk raises his eyes and stares.

The woman quits writing.

The old man stirs and wakes up.

What is it?

Someone is running up from the harbor.

Someone who has the sun behind him.

Someone who is bare-chested.

Waving his arms.

It’s clear something terrible has happened.

The man is running straight for the hotel.

His lips are working themselves into a scream.

Everyone in the lobby will recall their terror.

Everyone will remember this moment for the rest of their lives.

The poem below is an earlier work from 1968, the poet’s years-later interpretation of the figure and face he sees in a photograph of his father.

PHOTOGRAPH OF MY FATHER IN HIS TWENTY-SECOND YEAR

October. Here in this dank, unfamiliar kitchen

I study my father’s embarrassed young man’s face.

Sheepish grin, he holds in one hand a string

of spiny yellow perch, in the other

a bottle of Carlsbad Beer.

In jeans and denim shirt, he leans

against the front fender of a 1934 Ford.

He would like to pose bluff and hearty for his posterity,

Wear his old hat cocked over his ear.

All his life my father wanted to be bold.

But the eyes give him away, and the hands

that limply offer the string of dead perch

and the bottle of beer. Father, I love you,

yet how can I say thank you, I who can’t hold my liquor either,

and don’t even know the places to fish?

More of Raymond Carver here and here.

Going On About Crackers

One of those sublime June days of blue-green water, ocean breezes and mild sunlight, good time for propping up in an Adirondack chair and reading some pages of Raymond Carver. Two or three of his story collections are stacked up around here, but there is another, a well worn old paperback of the collected poems, All of Us. This is the collection put together by Carver’s wife and poet, Tess Gallagher eight years after the writer’s death. Gallagher is the woman Carver lived with for the last nine years of his life, marrying her only two months before his death in 1988.

In October of last year I posted three poems from this collection, but wavered some over which of the more than 300 poems in the book might be best for a short look at Carver’s poetry. Naturally, the tendency is to pick personal favorites, but there is hope also that a few of the chosen examples will give a clear look into the heart and peculiar expression of a great American writer. Here are two more poems from All of Us. The first, “Still Looking Out for Number One” originally appeared in the fall 1984 issue of Paris Review. The one who has ‘gone away for five days’ is Tess gallagher.

STILL LOOKING OUT FOR NUMBER ONE

Now that you’ve gone away for five days,
I’ll smoke all the cigarettes I want,
where I want. Make biscuits and eat them
with jam and fat bacon. Loaf. Indulge
myself. Walk on the beach if I feel
like it. And I feel like it, alone and
thinking about when I was young. The people
then who loved me beyond reason.
And how I loved them above all others.
Except one. I’m saying I’ll do everything
I want here while you’re away!
But there’s one thing I won’t do.
I won’t sleep in our bed without you.
No. It doesn’t please me to do so.
I’ll sleep where I damn well feel like it—
where I sleep best when you’re away
and I can’t hold you the way I do.
On the broken sofa in my study.

“Soda Crackers” is a delicious piece of whimsey, a Carveresque ode to a box of crackers which become a part of a solitary stay at his Port Angeles, Washington house. The poem first appeared in 1986.

SODA CRACKERS

You soda crackers! I remember

when I arrived here in the rain,

whipped out and alone.

How we shared the aloneness

and quiet of this house.

And the doubt that held me

from fingers to toes

as I took you out

of your cellophane wrapping

and ate you, meditatively,

at the kitchen table

that first night with cheese,

and mushroom soup. Now,

a month later to the day,

an important part of us

is still here. I’m fine.

And you—I’m proud of you, too.

You're even getting remarked

on in print! Every soda cracker

should be so lucky.

We’ve done all right for

ourselves. Listen to me.

I never thought

I could go on like this

about soda crackers.

But I tell you

the clear sunshiny

days are here, at last.

Raymond Carver: Poems

“This is writing stripped of pretense. It is ultimately a meditation on the things which shape all of our lives: loneliness, fear, hope, loss, love. More than anything, love.” — Independent (London)

American short story writer and poet, Raymond Carver was born in Clatskanie, Oregon in 1938. His first collection of stories, Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? was published in 1976 and shortlisted for the National Book Award. After the third collection (Cathedral) appeared in 1984, he was nominated for the National Book Award a second time. Cathedral is usually thought to be Carver’s finest work. In addition to his five collections of short stories, Carver also wrote six collections of poetry. He died in 1988 from lung cancer at the age of 50. That same year, he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Raymond Carver’s short stories have had a tremendous influence on that genre, and are all a classic example of refined minimalism. From his earliest days, Carver was attracted to the short form, testimony of that seen in a body of work that includes short stories and poetry, but no novels. His reputation is built solidly upon his stories, but like the English writer Thomas Hardy, readers often turn to the poetry after gaining familiarity with his stories. According to the writer, it was the brevity, as well as the intensity that attracted him to poetry.

In 1996, Carver’s widow, Tess Gallagher—herself a poet—published the collected poems of Raymond Carver. The collection is titled All of Us and includes over 300 of Carver’s poems. The three selected below are, apart from any other characteristics, poems that appeal to me personally. Possibly others are also impressed by the artlessness and easy access afforded by Carver’s particularly American word choice and arrangement.

MORNING, THINKING OF EMPIRE (1983)

We press our lips to the enameled rim of the cups

and know the grease that floats

over the coffee will one day stop our hearts.

Eyes and fingers drop onto silverware

that is not silverware. Outside the window, waves

beat against the chipped walls of the old city.

Your hands rise from the rough tablecloth

as if to prophesy. Your lips tremble…

I want to say to hell with the future.

Our future lies deep in the afternoon.

It is a narrow street with a cart and driver,

a driver who looks at us and hesitates,

then shakes his head. Meanwhile,

I coolly crack the egg of a fine Leghorn chicken.

Your eyes film. You turn from me and look across

the rooftops at the sea. Even the flies are still.

I crack the other egg.

Surely we have diminished one another.

HAPPINESS (1985)

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 other’s arm.

It’s early in the morning,

and they are doing this thing together.

They come on, slowly.

The sky is taking on light,

though the moon still hangs pale over the water.

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.

WHAT THE DOCTOR SAID (1988)

He said it doesn’t look good

he said it looks bad in fact real bad

he said I counted thirty-two of them on one lung before

I quit counting them

I said I’m glad I wouldn’t want to know

about any more being there than that

he said are you a religious man do you kneel down

in forest groves and let yourself ask for help

when you come to a waterfall

mist blowing against your face and arms

do you stop and ask for understanding at those moments

I said not yet but I intend to start today

He said I’m real sorry he said

I wish I had some other kind of news to give you

I said Amen and he said something else

I didn’t catch and not knowing what else to do

and not wanting him to have to repeat it

and me to have to fully digest it

I just looked at him

for a minute and he looked back it was then

I jumped up and shook hands with his man who’d just given me

something no one else on earth had ever given me

I may even have thanked him habit being so strong