Synopses & Reviews
This prodigiously rich collection suggests that Raymond Carver was not only America's finest writer of short fiction, but also one of its most large-hearted and affecting poets. Like Carver's stories, the more than 300 poems in
All of Us are marked by a keen attention to the physical world; an uncanny ability to compress vast feeling into discreet moments; a voice of conversational intimacy, and an unstinting sympathy.
This complete edition brings together all the poems of Carver's five previous books, from Fires to the posthumously published No Heroics, Please. It also contains bibliographical and textual notes on individual poems; a chronology of Carver's life and work; and a moving introduction by Carver's widow, the poet Tess Gallagher.
Review
"Carver's poetry is like an almost invisible strand of fishing line reeling us all together, connecting us by the heart." San Francisco Examiner and Chronicle
Review
"His eye is so clear, it almost breaks your heart." The Washington Post Book World
Review
"The best poems play like short stories in miniature, small heartrending scenes that resonate with telling detail...the lyrical reflections in his poems are as much a part of his formidable legacy as his incomparable stories." The Philadelphia Inquirer
Synopsis
All of Us brings together, in the order of their publication, the early poems of Fires, the mature work of Where Water Comes Together With Other Water, Ultramarine, and the intensely moving A New Path to the Waterfall, completed shortly before his death poems uncollected in his lifetime are printed in an appendix, and the text contains full details of first publication and significant variant readings. The introduction by Tess Gallagher, Raymond Carver's widow, provides valuable insights into his methods of composition.
About the Author
Raymond Carver was born in Clatskanie, Oregon, in 1938. His first collection of stories, Will You Please Be Quiet, Please (a National Book Award nominee in 1977), was followed by What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, Cathedral (nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in 1984), and Where I'm Calling From in 1988, when he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He died in August of that year, shortly after completing the poems of A New Path to the Waterfall.