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

Fountain Pen Design, Circa 1966

Some things tend to slip past me, and I am as it were, occasionally ‘late to the party.’ Such was the case with Lamy’s popular Safari fountain pen. By the time I got around to buying a Safari, it was far from new and already wildly popular. Now it has happened again, this time with a Lamy design that first appeared in 1966. Sitting before me now is a fountain pen that could be called the hallmark of minimalist Bauhaus design—the Lamy 2000.

Unbelievably, over forty years have passed since Lamy first released this pen. Four decades, and it looks like a design that came off the drawing board last week. The Lamy 2000 stands at the pinnacle of industrial design, and is the work of designer, Gerd Alfred Müller, following the Bauhaus idea of function dictating form in sleek zero-frills design. Tapping into 21st century descriptive jargon, some have described the Lamy 2000 as having no ‘bling.’ Perhaps the word serves its purpose in this instance, though it isn’t one easily associated with fountain pens. Müller’s design for Lamy won the Busse Long Life design prize in 1984, and is still frequently mentioned in European design reviews.

The body of the pen is made of a matte black fiberglass resin called Makrolon, with a very subtle grain not visible at first look. The only break in the matte black is a spring loaded, brushed steel pocket clip, and a small inlaid silver disc on the end opposite the clip. Looking closely at the side of the pocket clip you can see the name LAMY in small letters. The piston filler’s screw top has a totally invisible join, and initially one might wonder how to fill the pen. One feature which raises a question is the ink window, which only indistinctly shows the ink level, leaving one to guess how much ink remains in the pen.

Another unusual feature of the Lamy 2000 is its nib sizes. Available in a wide range—EF, F, M, OM, B, BB, OB, and OBB—these labels are misleading. Most who use the Lamy 2000 will recommend choosing a size down from the preferred size. In other words, the nib of the 2000 is broader than expected, and designations are misleading. I wonder if true extra fine writing is even possible with a Lamy 2000, since the ‘F’ writes as you would expect an ‘M’ nib to write. Bear in mind as well that the 14k gold, platinum plated nib has some flex, which is likely at times to lay down a wider line. The feeling is very, very different from the Safari, with its steel nib. The curious thing about my own Lamy 2000, which I got as a gift, is that it writes like an ‘M’ nib, but that is only a guess, as neither the pen, box, or enclosed paper reveal a nib size. So, a question occurs, if not ‘told’ by someone, how do you determine what nib size you have?

The 2000 is a wet pen, and ink flows from the hooded nib almost too freely. It writes beautifully on high quality absorbent paper (Crane), but tends to feather in my Noble Note journal, with its thick cream paper. Of the four different types of paper I’ve tried, there is feathering with only the Noble Note. I don't attribute the problem to the ink, Pilot’s Iroshizuku Fuyu-shogun.

I read a review that indicated US sales of the Lamy 2000 lag behind European sales. If I had to assign a reason for that, (and this is a guess) it might be that Americans prefer a pen not quite so wet, and that possibly the inaccurate nib labeling might cause some reluctance about buying it. I haven’t had my 2000 very long, but thus far it produces a line I like, and I look forward to using it often.