All of Us (36 page)

It seems important finally to say that Ray did not regard his poetry as simply a hobby or a pastime he turned to when he wanted a rest from fiction. Poetry was a spiritual necessity. The truths he came to through his poetry involved a dismantling of artifice to a degree not even Williams, whom he had admired early on, could have anticipated. He’d read Milosz’s lines in “
Ars Poetica?
” and they’d appealed to him:

Ray used his poetry to flush the tiger from hiding. Further, he did not look on his writing life as the offering of products to a readership, and he was purposefully disobedient when pressures were put on him to write stories because that’s where his reputation was centered and that’s where the largest reward in terms of publication and audience lay. He didn’t care. When he received the Mildred and Harold Strauss Living Award, given only to prose writers, he immediately sat down and wrote two books of poetry. He was not “building a career”; he was living a vocation and this meant that his writing, whether poetry or prose, was tied to inner mandates that insisted more and more on an increasingly unmediated apprehension of his subjects, and poetry was the form that best allowed this.

I can imagine that it might be tempting for those who loved Ray’s fiction to the exclusion of his poetry to feel he had gone astray in giving so much of his time to poetry in the final years. But this would be to miss the gift of freshness his poems offer in a passionless era. Because judgments about the contribution of poets lag far behind those volunteered toward fiction writers in this country, it will likely be some time before Ray’s impact as a poet can be adequately assessed. So far, the most astute essay on his poetry is Greg Kuzma’s, published in the
Michigan Quarterly Review
(Spring 1988). It could be that Ray, in his own fashion, has done as much to challenge the idea of what poetry can be as he did to reinvigorate the short story. What is sure is that he wrote and lived his last ten years by his own design, and as his companion in that life, I’m glad to have helped him keep his poetry alive for the journey, for the comfort and soul making he drew from it so crucially in his too-early going.

TESS GALLAGHER

In his poetry as in his fiction Raymond Carver was a frequent contributor to little magazines and small presses. Carver was also an inveterate reviser and republisher of his work. To varying degrees these practices shape his four major poetry collections:
Fires
(1983),
Where Water Comes Together with Other Water
(1985),
Ultramarine
(1986), and
A New Path to the Waterfall
(1989). Each of these books includes poems previously published in one or more of Carver’s small-press books.

Moreover, extensive revision and republishing occur within Carver’s small-press publications. More than a dozen poems from his first book,
Near Klamath
(1968), reappear in his second,
Winter Insomnia
(1970). Eleven poems from those two books find their way into his third book of poetry,
At Night the Salmon Move
(1976). This recursive process culminates in
Fires: Essays, Poems, Stories
, a miscellany initially published by a small press (Capra), then reprinted by a major one (Vintage). Of the fifty poems in
Fires
, all but a dozen derive from
Near Klamath, Winter Insomnia
, and
At Night the Salmon Move.
As Carver explains in his afterword to
Fires
,
*
some poems have been revised so slightly that changes are nearly imperceptible. Others have been lengthened, shortened, rephrased, retitled—in effect, rewritten. Significant textual variants created by this process are recorded in the notes on individual poems.

Described below are the small-press books Raymond Carver drew on in creating his major poetry collections. In addition to the early books
Near Klamath
(1968),
Winter Insomnia
(1970), and
At Night the Salmon Move
(1976), the list includes the limited editions
This Water
(1985),
Early for the Dance
(1986), and
Those Days
(1987). First publication or subsequent reprinting of poems as broadsides, greeting cards, or poetry pamphlets is recorded in the notes on individual poems.

Contents: Because
Near Klamath
is unpaginated, page numbers are given in brackets.

Colophon: One thousand copies of this book designed and printed by George Hitchcock at the Kayak Press.

Colophon: Designed for Capra Press by Noel Young in Santa Barbara, February 1976. Printed & bound by Mackintosh & Young. 100 copies were handbound by Emily Paine.

Colophon: This edition was designed by John Kristensen. It was printed letterpress from Optima type on Mohawk Superfine text and bound at the Firefly Press, Somerville, Massachusetts in January, 1985. Of 136 copies signed by the author, this is one of [either] 100 handsewn in paper wrappers [or] 36 specially bound in boards.

Colophon: This edition, designed by John Kristensen, was printed letterpress from Optima type on Mohawk Superfine text and bound at the Firefly Press, Somerville, Massachusetts in April, 1986. It is limited to 136 copies. Of these, 100 copies, numbered 1—100, are handsewn in paper wrappers and 36 deluxe copies, numbered I—XXXVI, are specially bound in cloth and paper over boards. All copies are signed by the author.

Colophon: First published by Raven Editions in 1987,
Those Days
is limited to 140 copies: numbered copies 1—100 are hand sewn and glued into paper wrappers; 26 copies lettered A—Z are hand bound in paper over boards; and 14 presentation copies
hors commerce
are hand bound in quarter leather with paper over boards. All copies are signed by the author.…

In a Marine Light
is a selected and combined edition of
Where Water Comes Together with Other Water
(1985) and
Ultramarine
(1986). As such, it presents 112 poems from those two books arranged in a unique six-part sequence.
In a Marine Light
was published in England, and no corresponding American edition exists.