Ultramarine: Poems

by Raymond Carver

"Carver's gifts as a storyteller shine through his poetry" ( Los Angeles Times ) in this collection that moves from the beauty of the world to thoughts of mortality and family and art. 

One of Raymond Carver’s final collections of poetry, this collection “has the astonished, chastened voice of a person who has survived a wreck, as surprised that he had a life before it as that he has one afterward, willing to remember both sides” ( The New York Times Book Review ).

Genres: Poetry, Literature, 20th Century, Fiction, American, Poetry Plays

161 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1986

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

[Candi · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars

Almost a year ago, my Goodreads friend, Julie, wrote a stunning review of a book of poetry. After reading her thoughts – which I recommend you do as well Right here – I immediately ordered a copy from one of my favorite used book sites. I brought it with me on a vacation to the mountains with a group of six teenagers. They were a lovely bunch of young people, but the timing was just not right for me to snuggle up with Raymond Carver for my first time. I decided to wait until I was good and ready to sink into this one. Last week, I decided - this is it.

I admit to having heard of Carver before, but I honestly didn’t know too much about him. I did a little poking around on the internet and learned some more. Now this collection is even more meaningful to me. Carver married at a young age to an even younger bride. He led a life full of hard drinking and died from lung cancer way too soon. This collection was published just two years prior to his death. The home that he owned with his second wife is not all that far from my own hometown! How did I not know this before?

Okay, now what did I actually think of his poetry? Well, I loved it. I was gutted, my heart was ripped out by a lot of it, but I’m so happy I read it. I don’t know if I’m making sense here. So much of Carver’s writing is about everyday things. Love, regret, loneliness, death, and nature. There are no apologies for the mistakes made. It felt like an admission or confession of sorts. In the words we choose to say and share, I believe we can set ourselves free in a way, can’t we? I’m getting all muddled now, so I’ll leave you with one of my favorites. I have a few, and re-read those several times before writing this one down:

"The Cobweb"

A few minutes ago, I stepped onto the deck
of the house. From there I could see and hear the water,
and everything that’s happened to me all these years.
It was hot and still. The tide was out.
No birds sang. As I leaned against the railing
a cobweb touched my forehead.
It caught in my hair. No one can blame me that I turned
and went inside. There was no wind. The sea
was dead calm. I hung the cobweb from the lampshade.
Where I watch it shudder now and then when my breath
touches it. A fine thread. Intricate.
Before long, before anyone realizes,
I’ll be gone from here.

Now I’m off to listen to sad songs and order more of Raymond Carver's work. Yes, I’m turning into a very sorry case indeed.

[Julie G · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sick with exile, they yearn homeward now, their eyes turned to the ultramarine. . .

Here it is, early April, and I can tell you, with total confidence, that Ultramarine is the best in show, the best book of the year for me. The winner.

It is, simply put, one of the best books I've ever encountered in my entire life.

Forget “poetry,” people. To use the word “poetry” here is unessential.

This is writing. Period.

And, so what if this writing was produced by a white man, a writer, a good son, a bad husband, and an average father?

This writing is not about a gender, a color or a profession; it's about being declared terminal and being stripped of everything except the truth.

There's nowhere to hide here, and nothing is hidden. No concealment of the ugly things we regret we do, the nasty and wonderful creatures we are, our vacillating confidence in the meaning of our lives and the precarious unknowing of what lies beyond them.

The threat of Death didn't snuff out Raymond Carver; it cracked him open, made him leak out all over these pages.

It produced the best writing, the only type of writing I really want to read. All bullshit removed.

Strangely, after reading this, I feel incredibly alive.

I lay until daybreak, holding
both arms fast across my chest.
Working my fingers now and then.
While my thoughts kept circling
around and around, but always going back
where they'd started from.
That one inescapable fact: even while
we undertake this trip,
there's another, far more bizarre,
we still have to make.

[Betsy Robinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

6/28/21 Finally finished and only one thing to say:


The reason I don’t like
Reading poems is that
A good poem says everything
There is to say
So I’m done.
I’m not ready to be
Done.

Original nonreview almost 2 years ago
I have just started reading this at the urging of GR friend Julie Grippo and because of her fantastic review, and having read the first few poems—all wrong—I’m just going to jump to the review to say no way am I going to review this.

Why?

Because it’s wonderful and I’m reading it all wrong, and the best I can do is to tell anybody else who is a non-poetry reader like moi what not to do:

• Don’t read it on a f***ing Kindle. Or any ebook reader. There’s a note at the beginning talking about the importance of line breaks to Raymond Carver, and fiddle as I might, so that now the font looks like bird feet scribble, I cannot get it the right size and still read it.

• Don’t read it the way you would a novel. Reading three poems in a row, as I just did, is insane. Each is a full meal. So my options are:

• to buy the paper book and add it to my sagging shelves even though I really don’t want another book, let alone poetry, which I will probably not read because there are too many novels I want to read, plus all the politics I feel compelled to stay on top of even though it makes me insane;

• to not read this because I respect writers too much and it is so good that I cannot possibly do it justice;

• to acknowledge that I am reading it all wrong, but by not going online with my Kindle, I can cheat the system and simply keep it as long as I want, reading a stanza a day if that is all I care to imbibe so that I can “aha” over the magnificence, and then never talk about this to anybody, and hope that the Amazon tyrant owners of GR don’t read the reviews or realize the flaw in their library-lending system.

Guess which option I’m choosing.

Thanks, Julie.

***
4/11/19 Update
Full disclosure: After my second day of reading one poem out loud ... and feeling the top of my head explode, I have ordered a copy of the paperback.

[Pedro · Rating 5 out of 5]

I always knew I was going to find the right kind of poetry for me.

5 stars.

Here’s why:

The Autopsy Room

Then I was young and had the strength of ten.
For anything, I thought. Though part of my job
at night was to clean the autopsy room
once the coroner’s work was done. But now
and then they knocked off early, or too late.
For, so help me, they left things out
on their specially built table. A little baby,
still as a stone and snow cold. Another time,
a huge black man with white hair whose chest
had been laid open. All his vital organs
lay in a pan beside his head. The hose
was running, the overhead lights blazed.
And one time there was a leg, a woman’s leg,
on the table. A pale and shapely leg.
I knew it for what it was. I’d seen them before.
Still, it took my breath away.

When I went home at night my wife would say,
“Sugar, it’s going to be all right. We’ll trade
this life in for another.” But it wasn’t
that easy. She’d take my hand between her hands
and hold it tight, while I leaned back on the sofa
and closed my eyes. Thinking of … something.
I don’t know what. But I’d let her bring
my hand to her breast. At which point
I’d open my eyes and stare at the ceiling, or else
the floor. Then my fingers strayed to her leg.
Which was warm and shapely, ready to tremble
and raise slightly, at the slightest touch.
But my mind was unclear and shaky. Nothing
was happening. Everything was happening. Life
was a stone, grinding and sharpening.

[Steven Godin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everywhere he went that day he walked
in his own past. Kicked through piles
of memories. Looked through windows
that no longer belonged to him.
Work and poverty and short change.
In those days they'd lived by their wills,
determined to be invincible.
Nothing could stop them. Not
for the longest while.

In the motel room
that night, in the early morning hours,
he opened a curtain. Saw clouds
banked against the moon. He leaned
closer to the glass. Cold air passed
through and put its hand over his heart.
I loved you, he thought.
Loved you well.
Before loving you no longer.

— — —

There was a great reckoning.
Words flew like stones through windows.
She yelled and yelled, like the Angel of Judgement.

Then the sun shot up, and a contrail
appeared in the morning sky.
In the sudden silence, the little room
became oddly lonely as he dried her tears.
Became like all the other little rooms on earth
light finds hard to penetrate.

Rooms where people yell and hurt each other.
And afterwards feel pain, and loneliness.
Uncertainly. The need to comfort.

[Shankar · Rating 5 out of 5]

This may well have been the most epochal event in my life in many ways. My recently found liking for poetry spurred by some very helpful friends here on GR as well serendipitously reading other good work.

Ultramarine was recommended to me and it was the first time I read the works of Raymond Carver. I went through this book possibly 5 times in all in the last 7 days. Each poem in this small book is a nugget. As I was told there is significantly more than meets the eye in each line. Some of the poems like The Afternoon and The Minuet are fairly straightforward while the others make you go back start from the beginning like The Garden and Bahia Brazil.

I am so much in raptures of this collection of poems that I was prompted to make my maiden attempt at verse. This has never happened to me from reading.

What can I say about Raymond Carver that has not already been said ? To me this was almost life changing because of the way the stories in these poems were said in a few simple stark lines - black and white....at times taunting..at times disturbing. Often I felt lost re reading the lines as I could not piece together the message but always knew that I am missing something bigger in the message. The stories relate to simple day to day life and common issues we all face. Alcoholism, love, death....

Maybe this is just me discovering a new found liking for poetry as a genre or it is Carver's genius. I was indeed driven to regret reading about Carver's personal life before his death at a young age. In some ways T S Eliot who I read before this book also had a difficult life though not similar to Carver. Possibly misery brings out creativity.

I hope to read all of Carver's works. Highly recommended.

[H (trying to keep up with GR friends) Balikov · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some of Carver’s poetry amused. Some was poignant. I cannot say that it hit me hard, as poetry often does. Here is a sample from The Best Time of Day:

Cool summer nights,
Windows open.
Lamps Burning.
Fruit in the bowl.
And your head on my shoulder.
These the happiest moments in the day.

Next to the early morning hours,
of course. And the time
just before lunch.
And the afternoon, and
early evening hours.
But I do love

These summer nights.
Even more, I think,
than those other times.
The work finished for the day.
And no one who can reach us now.
Or ever.

[Charles · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s a bleak view for Raymond Carver when he looks out the window, in this poetry collection. I learned around midway through, or rather was kindly reminded, that the author only had another year or two ahead of him when he wrote this – and knew it.

It’s a bleak view but certainly not a dejected attempt at poetry – in this case, prose poetry. Despite the extra economy of words, Carver’s thoughts go on flashing before your eyes with amazing clarity, as usual. His existential musings could hardly be more virile: between furtive allusions to excesses from the past and passing references to the weather, typical topics range from women and cars to fishing and hunting.

A sense of meditation runs through Ultramarine, regardless of these very earthly focal points. While the poems remain stand-alone features, a number of them connect with one another. An object that was singled out will recur, for instance, or the same people will be involved in a different scene, before disappearing for good. If not an actual continuity of story, there's cohesion and direction in there. I was carried along swiftly the minute I started reading and felt the need to pace myself, at some point.

This is the same Raymond Carver whom I met before in What We Talk About When We Talk About Love; I needn’t have mistrusted the poetry part.

Was he feeling okay? He felt fine. He just couldn’t
seem to stay still, was all. Something came into his eyes
and went away again. “What in hell are they talking about?”
he wanted to know. But didn’t wait for an answer.
Began to walk some more. I followed him awkwardly
from room to room while he remarked on the weather,
his job, his ex-wife, his kids. Soon, he guessed,
he’d have to tell them… something.
“Am I really going to die?”

Many thanks to Julie for signalling this little gem, and to Pedro for suggesting a buddy read. This was rock-solid writing and how perfect is that "Company" poem for something to stumble upon during pandemic times, after months of physical distancing already, really?

Company

This morning I woke up to rain
on the glass. And understood
that for a long time now
I've chosen the corrupt when
I had a choice. Or else,
simply, the merely easy.
Over the virtuous. Or the difficult.
This way of thinking happens
when I've been alone for days.
Like now. Hours spent
in my own dumb company.
Hours and hours
much like a little room.
With just a strip of carpet to walk on.

[Mica · Rating 4 out of 5]

“It’s the tenderness I care about.”

I’ve read Carver here and there throughout my life, and this was the first time I’ve read a collection of his from beginning to end. What a surprise that I found kinship with this huntin’, fishin’ white man. I guess that goes to show you that suffering paints humanity with a wide brush, and the search for a gentleness from life, an even wider one.

[Anima · Rating 4 out of 5]

Circulation
‘...
I lay until daybreak, holding
both arms fast across my chest.
Working my fingers now and then.
While my thoughts kept circling
around and around, but always going back
where they’d started from.
That one inescapable fact: even while
we undertake this trip,
there’s another, far more bizarre,
we still have to make.‘

[Derek · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thanks to the poet that recommended this book. I was greatly impressed with Carver’s economy and versatility as a poet. He writes about a wide variety of subjects with equal grace, though a tragic note seems to provide some continuity between each topic. The poems reminded me of the poems in the Russian poet Lev Ozerov’s collection, Portraits without Frames. Both poets seem to be providing the reader with extremely compact short stories. Of course, Auden reminds us that free verse requires more poetic discipline than any other kind of verse.

[Numidica · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm working on a review of this remarkable book of poetry.

[Lucy Dacus · Rating 3 out of 5]

My favorites were The Sensitive Girl, The Pen, Waiting, and Slippers.

[Ryan Werner · Rating 1 out of 5]

Though Raymond Carver saw much success due to the strength of his short fiction, he fails to captivate with his poetry.

Raymond Carver (1938-1988) is often hailed as a writer’s writer, someone whose craft and voice are just as important as the story itself. He uses the language of the people he writes about to tell their story, and though he’s been labeled a minimalist, his work is more of that of a precisionist. Carver wastes no words, and his portions are perfect. To place Carver in the top three short story writers of all time would be no exaggeration. However, the poetry in his 1986 collection Ultramarine (Vintage, ISBN: 0394755359) leaves a lot to be desired.

Too Much Fiction in the Poetry, Not Enough Fiction in the Poetry

While Carver's stories are able to carry sparse poetic moments (the drawing at the end of “Cathedral” or the barber moving his hands through the man’s hair in “The Calm,” to name two) through the strength of the narrative, his poems have almost no narrative to speak of. A poem like “Limits” is almost successful because Carver spreads it out a bit and lets some sort of form emerge, but even then he relies too heavily on the abstract.

A Lack of Concrete Language Works Against Carver's Poems

Carver has always used the abstract well, and it’s disappointing to see him fail so miserably at mastering that same trait in his poetry. The vast majority of these poems are like the last line of the story “Fat” (“Waiting for what? I’d like to know. My life is going to change. I feel it.”), where the reader is allowed to have the whimsy because they’ve been set-up for it.

These poems begin and end with arbitrary people doing arbitrary things, and they eat their slice of life without sharing. This all goes back to the poems being too much like the stories: from-the-gut tales of yore as told by an almost-dead Grandfather, the only man who can tell the same story as everyone else, but make it matter. Here’s the difference: same Grandpa, same stories, except he’s senile now and can only get out bits and pieces. Everything’s disjointed and the listener can only shrug, because even though the story and the people in it probably matter, he’s just not convincing enough.

An Occasional Genius

Though Carver's poetry lacks what made his fiction so successful, there are lines that stand out as being amongst his most honest and harrowing work. A line like "What I've trampled on in order to stay alive" (From "This Morning") stands out for its acknowledgment of desperation, its claiming of the ghosts. while these lines aren't enough to carry the poetry all the way to the end, they are solid and resonating in and of themselves.


If reading this collection as a curious fan of Carver's short fiction, a reader is advised to go into the work easily and with an open mind. As an anthology of simplicity and satisfied emptiness, these poems nearly succeed, which is more heartbreaking than any singular piece of writing contained between the covers.

[Paul Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am not American and have never visited Washington State but can empathise with Carver's poetry. He wistfully combines the sense of loss, loneliness and failures in middle age life with the joy of nature and in particular fishing. Maybe he is the voice of a generation.

[Alyssah Morrison · Rating 4 out of 5]

The man loves to fish. Banger end lines.

[Yong Xiang · Rating 3 out of 5]

the style is a bit too prosaic for me :(

but, i will say, some of the poems are sneakily poignant, the way mr carver searches for happiness in spite of pain that quietly haunts and mortality that lurks around the corner...

Son

Awakened this morning by a voice from my childhood
that says Time to get up, I get up.
All night long, in my sleep, trying
to find a place where my mother could live
and be happy. If you want me to lose my mind,
the voice says okay. Otherwise,
get me out of here! I’m the one to blame
for moving her to this town she hates. Renting
her the house she hates.
Putting those neighbors she hates so close.
Buying the furniture she hates.
Why didn’t you give me money instead, and let me spend it?
I want to go back to California, the voice says.
I’ll die if I stay here. Do you want me to die?
There’s no answer to this, or to anything else
in the world this morning. The phone rings
and rings. I can’t go near it for fear
of hearing my name once more. The same name
my father answered to for 53 years.
Before going to his reward.
He died just after saying “Take this
into the kitchen, son.”
The word son issuing from his lips.
Wobbling in the air for all to hear.

[Courtney Johnston · Rating 3 out of 5]

So, I don't think Raymond Craver is a very good poet. That didn't stop me from being very taken with a number of these works (and more so by others I found online, scavenging around, and even more so with the next collection, which I skimmed on the walk back from the library to work, becoming an obstacle for pedestrians and a hazard for drivers as I lost myself to the words and pulled away from my surroundings).

I love these poems less for their rhythm and lyricism, more for the small observation, the occasionally cruel honesty. Some felt more like dreams and thoughts and experiences jotted down than poems: 'Mother'

My mother calls to wish me a Merry Christmas.
And to tell me if this snow keeps on
she intends to kill herself. I want to say
I'm not myself this morning, please
give me a break. I may have to borrow a psychiatrist
again. The one who always asks me the most fertile
of questions. "But what are you really feeling?"
Instead, I tell her one of our skylights
has a leak. While I'm talking, the snow is
melting onto the couch. I say I've switched to All-Bran
so there's no need to worry any longer
about me getting cancer, and her money coming to an end.
She hears me out. Then informs me
she's leavingthis goddamn place. Somehow. The only time
she wants to see it, or me again, is from her coffin.
Suddenly, I ask if she remembers the time Dad
was dead drunk and bobbed the tail of the Labrador pup.
I go on like this for a while, talking about
those days. She listens, waiting her turn.
It continues to snow. It snows and snows
as I hang on the phone. The trees and rooftops
are covered with it. How can I talk about this?
How can I possibly explain what I am feeling?

Some feel like even more extreme distillations of Carver's short stories, already lean themselves, but broken with enjambments (not even all that precisely or elegantly - almost like any old person breaking up a short piece of writing some it makes a 'poem'). 'The Jungle' is one of these works - but the last two lines saved it for me:

"I only have two hands,"
the beautiful flight attendant
says. She continues
up the aisle with her tray and
out of his life forever,
he thinks. Off to his left,
far below, some lights
from a village high
on a hill in the jungle.

So many impossible things
have happened,
he isn't surprised when she
returns to sit in the
empty seat across from his.
"Are you getting off
in Rio, or going on to Buenos Aires?"

Once more she exposes
her beautiful hands.
The heavy silver rings that hold
her fingers, the gold bracelet
encircling her wrist.

They are somewhere in the air
over the steaming Mato Grosso.
It is very late.
He goes on considering her hands.
Looking at her clasped fingers.
It's months afterwards, and
hard to talk about.

'Nyquil' has a passage in it that struck me hard and true:

Call it iron discipline. But for months
I never took my first drink
before eleven P.M. Not so bad,
considering. This was in the beginning
phase of things. I knew a man
whose drink of choice was Listerine.
He was coming down off Scotch.
He bought Listerine by the case,
and drank it by the case. The back seat
of his car was piled high with dead soldiers.
Those empty bottles of Listerine
gleaming in his scalding back seat!
The sight of it sent me home soul-searching.
I did that once or twice. Everybody does.
Go way down inside and look around.
I spent hours there, but
didn't meet anyone, or see anything
of interest. I came back to the here and now,
and put on my slippers. Fixed
myself a nice glass of NyQuil.
Dragged a chair over to the window.
Where I watched a pale moon sruggle to rise
over Cupertino, California.
I waited through hours of darkness with NyQuil.
And the, sweet Jesus! the first sliver
of light.

The sight of it sent me home soul-searching. I did that once or twice. Everybody does. Go way down inside and look around. I spent hours there, but didn't meet anyone, or see anything of interest. Yes. That.

There is some sweetness, some lightness. some fancy: 'The Minuet'

Bright mornings.
Days when I want so much I want nothing.
Just this life, and no more. Still,
I hope no one comes along.
But if someone does, I hope it’s her.
The one with the little diamond stars
at the toes of her shoes.
The girl I saw dance the minuet.
That antique dance.
The minuet. She danced that
the way it should be danced.
And the way she wanted.

There is also a lot of fishing. A LOT OF FISHING. And I am good with that - but Brautigan and Bishop already own fishing for me. After a while, I started skimming those ones. Death and fishing. I feel ya.

This though is my favourite in the collection. Pierre Bonnard painted his wife Marthe over and over again in the decades of their marriage, in his luminous light and colour-soaked canvases. Marthe aged with the years, but not the image of her that Pierre held. 'Bonnard's Nudes' -

His wife. Forty years he painted her.
Again and again. The nude in the last painting
the same young nude as the first. His wife.

As he remembered her young. As she was young.
His wife in her bath. At her dressing table
in front of the mirror. Undressed.

His wife with her hands under her breasts
looking out on the garden.
The sun bestowing warmth and color.

Every living thing in bloom there.
She young and tremulous and most desirable.
When she died, he painted a while longer.

A few landscapes. Then died.
And was put down next to her.
His young wife.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

I haven’t read a lot of Carver. I started What We Talk About When We Talk About Love and couldn’t finish it. Here I found his writing so much more approachable here when he spoke about his ailing mother, the river where he fished, letters by Renoir, his relationships, and appreciation for human connection, etc. I found so much color (yellow fields, blue mountains, black river) here and found myself wanting more. This copy was borrowed from the library, but I loved it that I may buy my own.

[Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

it’s good I just didn’t enjoy it

[Swans Blakey · Rating 5 out of 5]

“There isn’t enough of anything
as long as we live. But at intervals
a sweetness appears and, given a chance,
prevails.”

[Steven · Rating 5 out of 5]

End to end, this is my favorite Carver poetry collection. Favorite poem is "The Phone Booth," but there's a lot of contenders.

[Pranav Radee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Choking yet delicate, a duality that uniquely belongs only to Raymond Carver.

[OctoToast · Rating 4 out of 5]

My friend saw me reading this and opened it and went “oh is this a book of bad poetry?”

Favorite poems:
Where the Groceries Went
Migration

[Matthew Konkel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Damn, Carver. How do you do it? How do you make "ordinary life" so effing interesting? Ray takes the most mundane subject and peels it up into an engaging, entertaining piece of work. Ray could take the color blue and make you see it like you're seeing it for the first time, like you've been blind your whole life. If I could only compose half as good ol' Ray. Again, most people know Ray as a short story writer but I seem to like Carver's poems more than his fiction. Moreover, I enjoyed this collection more than Where Water Comes Together With Other Water.

[Jozef Melichár · Rating 4 out of 5]

I know Carver as a poet from several discussion as some alternative to Bukowski. There is a group of people who will tell you, that Carver writes similar poetry but much better. I see there more differences than similarities but I like both of them. Carver is more subtle, even boring sometimes, but like in his stories there si certain mood and atmosphere, even deepness all around his shallow lines. At the end I always have this feeling: I need to read it again.

[Mark Valentine · Rating 4 out of 5]

The single, most substantial benefit I gained from reading Carver's poems lies in their transparent honesty and gutsy self-reflection. They penetrate deeper than even Hemingway's veneer. It makes it that much more rewarding, then, when he writes about tenderness and affection because the sincerity has great clarity, value.

[Erik · Rating 5 out of 5]

I keep picking this book up and flipping to favorite poems: "The Possible," "Son," "The Jungle," "The Meadow," "Limits," just to name a few. I've loved Carver's fiction for a while, but his poetry is great when it's good.

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not a poetry guy but I like Ray Carver. His poems read like his short stories. Not a lot of detail in the words but deep in to the personalities of the people he writes about.

[Tiffany · Rating 4 out of 5]

Section 3 is my favorite. I like a lot from the beginning too, but he's more depressed and bitter in the beginning.