Winter Insomnia

by Raymond Carver, Robert McChesney (Illustrator)

Rare, signed copy of this sought after Carver work.

Genres: Poetry

56 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 1970

About the author

Carver was born into a poverty-stricken family at the tail-end of the Depression. He married at 19, started a series of menial jobs and his own career of 'full-time drinking as a serious pursuit', a career that would eventually kill him. Constantly struggling to support his wife and family, Carver enrolled in a writing programme under author John Gardner in 1958. He saw this opportunity as a turning point.

Rejecting the more experimental fiction of the 60s and 70s, he pioneered a precisionist realism reinventing the American short story during the eighties, heading the line of so-called 'dirty realists' or 'K-mart realists'. Set in trailer parks and shopping malls, they are stories of banal lives that turn on a seemingly insignificant detail. Carver writes with meticulous economy, suddenly bringing a life into focus in a similar way to the paintings of Edward Hopper. As well as being a master of the short story, he was an accomplished poet publishing several highly acclaimed volumes.

After the 'line of demarcation' in Carver's life - 2 June 1977, the day he stopped drinking - his stories become increasingly more redemptive and expansive. Alcohol had eventually shattered his health, his work and his family - his first marriage effectively ending in 1978. He finally married his long-term parter Tess Gallagher (they met ten years earlier at a writers' conference in Dallas) in Reno, Nevada, less than two months before he eventually lost his fight with cancer.

Reviews

[Mirjana K. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love Carver so much better as a poet than as a short stories writer.
There is more sincerity and less desperation in them.
Beautiful.

[Nat Baldino · Rating 4 out of 5]

First book of 2019, begun at 2am during a sleepless night, good timing. Knowing that Carver was in the program and struggled with incorporating the same principles and ways of living as I am makes me read between the lines of all of this in a way that feels special.

[M.W.P.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

The mind would like to get out of here
Onto the snow. It would like to run
With a pack of shaggy animals, all teeth,

Under the moon, across the snow, leaving
No prints or spoor, nothing behind.
The mind is sick tonight.

It wishes Chekhov were here to minister
Something - three drops of valerian, a glass
Of rose water - anything, it wouldn't matter.

The mind can't sleep, can only lie awake and
Gorge, and listen to the snow gathering
For the final assault.
- Winter Insomnia (pg. 23)

Reading Carver's reference to Chekhov, I'm reminded that Roberto Bolaño, in his 12 Tips on the Art of Writing Short Stories, aligns both authors, "for one of the two of them is the best writer of the twentieth century".

Indeed, Carver is best remembered for his short stories. His poems often go overlooked. This rare volume of Carver's poetry may prove difficult to find (with only one thousand copies in print). Readers of Carver's short stories curious about his poems may have better luck with All of Us or Fires .

This collection contains one of Carver's best-known lines...

How much do writers make? she said
first off
she'd never met a writer
before
Not much I said
they have to do other things
Like what? she said
Like working in mills I said
sweeping floors teaching school
picking fruit
whatnot
all kinds of things I said
In my country she said
someone who had been to college
would never sweep floors
Well that's just when they're starting out I said
all writers make lots of money
Writer me a poem she said
a love poem
All poems are love poems I said
I don't understand she said
It's hard to explain I said
[...]
- For Semra, with Martial Vigor (pg. 40)

My favourite poems in the collection...

A matinee that Saturday
 afternoon Sound of Music
 Your coat on the empty seat
 beside me
 your hand in my lap
 we are transported
 to Austria
 There
 somewhere along the Rhine
 In any of these old
 beautiful towns
 we could live quietly
 a hundred years
Later
 you put on an apron
 fix me a cup of tea with a slice of lemon
 on Radio Monitor
 Herb Alpert
 and the Tijuana Brass
 play Zorba the Greek
 We also overhear
 part of a conversation
 with Dizzy Dean
 On the floor
 beside the bed Esquire
 Frank Sinatra
 surrounded by flaming cigarette lighters
 Tacitus
 Maxim Gorky
 under the ashtray
Your head on my arm
 we smoke cigarettes
 and talk of Lake Louise
 Banff National Park
 the Olympics
 Peninsula
 places
 neither of us has seen
 Outside 
 heat lightning
 the first heavy drops of rain
 strike the patio
 Listen
 How splendid these gifts
 - Adultery (pg. 52-53)