Dear Ghosts: Poems

Fourteen years after the publication of Moon Crossing Bridge, Tess Gallagher's powerful elegies following the death of her husband, Raymond Carver, Dear Ghosts, is the long-awaited return of Gallagher's unequivocal voice. In this new collection, her seventh, the ghosts of the past are conjured and communed with as part of the poet's present day: the deceased beloved, the father long dead, the victims of holocaust and war. With these spirits beside her, Gallagher confronts her own illness and mortality and celebrates new love and friendship in these spare lyrics and sprawling narratives, each punctuated by her feisty resilience and signature grace. Here is the original new work by one of America's most accomplished poets.

"Gallagher's big, emotion-rich volume is her first in 14 years: she enjoys dual reputations as an accessible, likable maker of verse about scenes and spaces in women's lives (somewhat like Jane Hirshfeld or Mary Oliver) and as the widow of short story master Raymond Carver and curator of his legacy. 'I can't help my changes any more/ than you could yours,' says a poem on the anniversary of Carver's death. There are other elegies, and poems that commemorate other friends and family among the living; outline her European, Asian and sub-Arctic travels; and pursue the lessons she draws from South and East Asian religious practices. Gallagher's own fight against cancer provides another subtext for many poems and the explicit subject for a few. She celebrates her survival while finding 'Time/ to admit the limitations of death.' The many who cherished her earlier verse will find the new work profound." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

"Never morose, sentimental, or embittered, Gallagher opens herself to the intricate miseries and mysteries of love in poems that are worthy of the Pulitzer Prize." The Seattle Times

"Gallagher's poems resound with exquisite beauty and remind me once more how it is not subject but its rendering that redeems and uplifts." The Boston Globe

"It is impossible to read Tess Gallagher's poems without being drawn into their mesmerizing rhythms and convinced of the rightness of her intense yet unforced images." Joyce Carol Oates

The long-awaited and resplendent new poetry collection by Tess Gallagher, whose poems "are a gift of a poet's heart and soul to her readers" (Robert Coles)

The long-awaited and resplendent new poetry collection by Tess Gallagher, whose poems are a gift of a poet's heart and soul to her readers (Robert Coles)

Don't sharpen them.

Expectation, more dangerous

than any blade.

--Knives in the Borrowed House

Fourteen years after Moon Crossing Bridge--Tess Gallagher's powerful elegies for her husband, Raymond Carver--Dear Ghosts, is the return of Gallagher's unequivocal voice. In these new poems, the ghosts of the past are conjured as part of the present day: the deceased beloved, the father long dead, the ailing mother, the victims of holocaust and war. With these spirits beside her, Gallagher confronts her own illness and mortality, and celebrates love and friendship in these spare lyrics and muscular narratives, each punctuated by her resilience and grace. Here is the new work by one of America's most accomplished poets.

Tess Gallagher is a poet, fiction writer, essayist, screenplay writer, and translator. Her poetry collections include Dear Ghosts, Moon Crossing Bridge, and Amplitude: New and Selected Poems. In 1979 she began living with the short-story writer Raymond Carver, whom she married shortly before his death in 1988. In Ireland, she bought lambs to save them from the butcher and has begun weaving wall hangings from their fleece. She lives in Port Angeles, Washington.