In this remarkable collection, Carver's poems provide an incredibly intimate and revealing look into the intricate web of human relationships. They delve deep into the struggles that we all face in our everyday lives, those battles that are often hidden beneath the surface. Moreover, they capture the haunting echoes of experiences that are frequently left unspoken, those silent moments that shape our lives.

Carver accomplishes this through his masterful use of spare language and stark imagery. With just a few carefully chosen words, he is able to capture moments of profound significance, shining a light on the beauty that can be found in the most ordinary of things. At the same time, he also uncovers the pain that lies concealed beneath the seemingly mundane surface of our lives.

As Raymond Carver himself so eloquently put it, "Woke up this morning with a terrific urge to lie in bed all day and read." This simple yet powerful statement encapsulates the essence of his work, inviting us to slow down, observe the world around us, and discover the hidden depths within our own lives.

How can I, on one hand, abhor and, on the other hand, exalt in "All of Us" without ever bringing up the question of my own inadequacies as a writer, and, more truthfully, as a human?

Read this. That includes the appendixes. It won't be a walk in the park, but don't give up. The misery that Carver imposes on his readers appears to merely act as a reminder that each day is a fleeting yet profound gift.

Thank you and good riddance. This piece of work makes me question my own capabilities and perspectives. Do I have the right to judge Carver's portrayal of misery? Am I truly able to understand the depth of the emotions he is trying to convey?

As I continue to read, I find myself getting more and more absorbed in the story. The characters come alive in my mind, and I can feel their pain and suffering. It's a powerful experience that makes me realize the importance of literature in our lives.

Despite my initial abhorrence, I now find myself exalting in the beauty and truth of "All of Us". It's a complex and multi-faceted work that challenges my assumptions and makes me think deeply about the human condition.

Repeat after me: à chacun son goût. This is my very first encounter with Carver's poetry. I must state this clearly from the outset: I do not hold Carver's poems in contempt, yet neither do I have any inclination to read them again. He didn't concern himself with the lyric voice. Don't expect to find any flashes of inspiration. Occasionally, one might feel compelled to shed dry tears.

Carver presents a monochromatic body of work. It's essentially prose masquerading as poetry. In some obscure corners, Carver is lumped in with the loosely defined group of poets who practice so-called "dirty realism." Think of Bukowski (but Carver is not as abrasive as Bukowski, not nearly as overbearing as Bukowski).

Carver's poetic endeavors are marginally better than nothing, but what he writes truly isn't poetry in any form that appeals to me. …à chacun son goût

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“¿Quién no se ha sentido alguna vez desarmado ante la poesía que exige mucho menos de lo que nos entrega con absoluta generosidad?”, escribe Tess Gallagher, poeta y esposa de Raymond Carver, en el prólogo de este libro.

The poetry of Carver appears simple, perhaps due to its themes or the simplicity of its language. However, it also reaches an unexpected depth, like deep wells of melancholy that open up between its verses. And his patient gaze also allows him to discover beauty in the everyday, in what is around him, in his present and also in his past.

He writes about himself and the people in his personal history; about anecdotes and everyday objects; about landscapes, walks in nature and fishing trips. He writes about the love for his wife and about the peace with which he accepts the proximity of his own death.

But in addition, just as his stories have flashes of poetry, many of his poems tell small stories, like seeds of stories that only need one or two pages to show what matters.

I come out of the book with the feeling of knowing Ray, of having visited an old friend.

Jeff loaned me this collection of poems.

Several of the poems were truly enjoyable. They had a certain charm that made them a pleasure to read.

A few of the poems were near-perfect, with their beautiful language and profound emotions.

I think my favorite was "At Least". It had a unique quality that set it apart from the others.

Not surprisingly, for Raymond Carver, many of the poems read like ultra-short stories. His narrative, poetic style was very engaging and drew me in.

I also liked the deeply personal nature of the work. It felt as if he was sharing his most intimate thoughts and feelings with the reader.

However, that aspect became less prevalent in the later works. There were more homages to other writers, literary works, and historical events.

These poems were much less interesting for me. They seemed to lack the personal touch that made the earlier poems so special.

This collection, overall, has made me eager to read Carver's short stories soon. I'm curious to see how his narrative style translates to the longer form.

Raymond Carver achieved well-deserved worldwide fame in the 1970s and 1980s with his short stories.

These stories are filled with desperate bleakness and the "dirty realism" of life, love, and often the lost souls who are led astray by alcohol.

Moreover, in these stories, Carver proved himself to be the master of omission and "writing is erasing": the beginning and the end are missing, and in just a few incredibly sparing lines, only the tip of an iceberg is shown.

Yet, as a reader, you are completely blown away by the worlds of unspoken and inexpressible feelings that are only evoked between the lines. I used to love reading those stories.

However, in addition to short stories, Carver also wrote poems, and I always left them aside.

But my wife was kind enough to give me "All of us" for my birthday, the collected poems that are partly translated in "Where water flows together with other water".

And to my pleasant surprise, I found it to be a very beautiful poetry collection, which I read in one go despite its size (a thick 300 pages).

The poems of Carver work just as powerfully with the unspoken between the lines as his stories.

Perhaps even more strongly, because the language of his poems is even more concentrated, even more stripped-down, even more sparing.

Carver himself thought that he was first and foremost a poet and only then a writer of short stories. Who knows.

He is indeed a remarkable minimalist poet, for his poems are often very short and extremely simple in language.

It is rather ultra-concentrated prose than flowery poetry, for there is no rhyme, nor meter nor metaphor.

But precisely because of this, he is a very suggestive and intriguing poet. Precisely because of his bareness.

Take, for example, the short poem "The scratch": "I woke up with a spot of blood / over my eye. A scratch / halfway across my forehead. But / I'm sleeping alone these days. / Why on earth would a man raise his hand / against himself, even in sleep? / It's this and similar questions / I'm trying to answer this morning. / As I study my face in the window".

A strangely simple, almost banal content: someone looks at a scratch on his forehead in a mirrored window. That's it.

Yet, the poem is intriguing, through the very implicit suggestions of loneliness and divorce ("I'm sleeping alone these days") and of self-destruction, and through the understated but fundamental wonder of the I-figure.

Wonder that suggests that he may well have completely lost his way and no longer has a grip on who he is.

And so the whole collection is full of suggestions of wonder, confusion, being lost in life.

Suggestions that are only evoked as mood images and precisely because of this are moving.

However, there are also many poems in it that, in a similar sparing and suggestive way, are full of incomprehensible and inexplicable joy of life: the charm of walking in nature, the inexplicable feeling of someone who is sitting on the ground and yet is happy to be alive, the detachment and peace of fishermen, the indefinable joy that arises from a random association or from an impressionistic meditation.

I found this very surprising: as I remember well, in Carver's stories, sadness always comes to the fore, while in this poetry collection, in addition to all the incomprehensible sadness, there is also a lot of incomprehensible joy of life.

And this joy of life somehow gains intensity through all the sadness around it.

And most beautiful of all is the way in which this joy of life is always evoked as a mystery, as a kind of gift of chance, without a tangible and explicable basis.

As a mood, then, that you cannot define or analyze, but that you can only experience with wonder.

Read "All of us" and enjoy, I would say. Or else translations of Carver's poems.

I myself will also read his stories again sometime soon, for I am curious whether those stories will come across differently to me now that I know his poems.

Before delving into this book, my acquaintance with Carver was solely as a writer of short stories. However, this collection has truly been a revelation. It is a testament to the fact that Carver was not only a master of the short story but also a genuine poet capable of producing real poetry. The majority of the poems in this collection are deeply rooted in his own life experiences, which gives them an authenticity that is truly captivating.

I have a profound appreciation for the straightforward clarity of his writing. It is as if he is able to convey his thoughts and emotions with the utmost simplicity, yet with a power that is undeniable. Reading this poetry collection, which spans over a decade, might seem like a daunting task at first. But once you start, you will find yourself completely captivated and unable to put it down.

Carver's poetry is both clear and impactful. He has an extraordinary gift for choosing the perfect words and using just a few phrases to bring fully developed characters to life. His greatest strength as a poet lies in his ability to take the most ordinary and seemingly superficial aspects of life and transform them into epic journeys. Through his poetry, he reveals a soul that is at peace with the world, despite the many hardships and challenges that he has faced.

Many of Carver's poems are deeply poignant and delve into the profound themes of dysfunction and despair. He vividly portrays the struggles of individuals who are caught in the grip of addiction, symbolized by alcohol and the haze of cigarette smoke. These works act as unflinching mirrors, reflecting the harsh realities of a tumultuous life that is often filled with moments of sorrow and missed opportunities.

His free verse mini-chronicles intricately weave tales of those who are living on the fringes of society. With a keen eye for detail, he captures the raw, everyday experiences of these individuals, often concluding his narratives abruptly. This serves as a reminder that life's episodes rarely have a neat and tidy ending, leaving many stories unresolved and open to interpretation.

One of the final poems in this book, "Late Fragment," is almost unbearably moving. In just a few short lines, the poet expresses his deepest desires: "To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth." This simple yet profound statement encapsulates the essence of what it means to be human and the longing that we all have for love and connection.

Overall, I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It is a must-read for anyone who appreciates great poetry and wants to gain a deeper understanding of the human condition.

Raymond Carver is a renowned author, and those who have already read and loved all of his short stories might think that his poems don't offer much new. This is because they often revisit many of the themes that have already been extensively dealt with and discussed in his narrative works.

However, in my opinion, these poems are able to perfectly condense everything that Raymond Carver's writing has represented. He is considered the absolute father of minimalism.

Despite his premature death and the difficult and complex life that characterized his entire existence, Raymond Carver always considered himself a very fortunate man - from a human and literary perspective. He was able to live two lives in one: before and after his alcoholism. His poems, like his stories, have a unique charm and power that continue to captivate readers and inspire generations of writers.

I don't recall whether I have managed to read through this entire poetry collection or not.

I have a better memory for individual volumes rather than collected works.

Carver is a master of the line break, just like Bukowski was. At times, the words might seem ordinary, but it's those line breaks that have the power to break your heart every single time.

I am completely in love with the poem "Luck" - truly in love with it. Often, I will read it to beginning poetry students as an example of how poetry is about writing what we truly desire to say, not what we think we should say. Hooray for hard-hitting, gut-wrenching honesty.

There is also a rather long poem in here about Carver drinking with Bukowski, and it is *beautiful*.

It adds a unique charm and depth to the collection, painting a vivid picture of their interaction and the atmosphere of that moment.

The combination of Carver's masterful use of language and the emotional impact of his line breaks makes this poetry collection a must-read for any lover of poetry.

When we talk about love, it is full of simplicity and attention. Attention in every day and always in sight.

"Cold summer nights
Open windows
Bright lights
Fruits in the bowl
And your head on my shoulder
This is the best moment of the day."

A sparrow sat behind the window.

The sparrow is not a goldfinch or a nightingale.

The sparrow is not Homer, soaked in blood after battle

This is just a sparrow.

That has never been anywhere in life.

The sparrow sat on the branch of a tree.

Then it flew into the beauty. Out of my life.

"I am greedy.

I have been more than this, but I want to wake up early in the morning.

And go back to my chair with a little coffee and wait. Just wait to see what happens."

"A woman in the suburbs of Paris said that Istanbul is the most romantic city.

And I asked if you had read anything from Khayyam?"

"I keep saying that I have never been sick. But something suddenly came on my shoulder. And started to walk. I think it's a meal. The meal of falling in love with a word."

"My wife is chatting with me in the corner of this house.

I hear her automatic voice.

Now she is taking her hand from writing and crying.

Then I hear her automatic voice again.

My night has covered the whole earth. The man who owns this land tells me not to leave my car. My wife continues to write, she cries and writes."

"It is August and I have read nothing but the book 'Return to Moscow' by Colin Court.

With all this, I am happy.

From driving with my brother and drinking a glass of old wine."

"My wife disappeared with her clothes.

With two pairs of nylon socks and a shirt that she put on the bed."

"The fear of my childish handwriting on the packages of letters

The fear of the death of those who die before me and I will feel guilty.

The fear of living with my mother in old age.

The fear of getting fat

The fear of waking up and finding that you have gone.

The fear of falling in love and. The fear of excessive love."

I'm definitely taking the credit for "reading" this in 2023. The main reason is that my reading speed has slowed down significantly due to the nonsense of full-time work for a living. However, I actually started reading this in July of last year when I purchased it. In the second half of 2022, I wasn't very good at poetry in general. At least part of the reason was that I knew I had to finish this before moving on, and it's just so dull. There's an endless repetition of poems about fishing. Maybe it's an untrodden niche, but there's a reason for that. And there's also the exploration of unresolved trauma regarding Carver's drinking, his infidelity, and his relationship with his parents. I have no problem with these topics, although I have zero patience for alcoholism as a narrative theme. But his writing is the worst kind of Hemingway-lite. That is, lacking in lyricism, beauty, or wit. It's "fun." Honestly, when he does come up with something good, it definitely feels like an accident. Like those often-quoted lines from Rain or Late Fragment. Like many poets I've read based on one good poem, Carver really only had one good poem in him.

The Blue Stones:

‘The tide is going out across the shingle,
and nothing on earth can stop it.
The smooth stones you pick up and examine
under the moon’s light have been made blue
from the sea. Next morning when you pull them
from your trouser pocket, they are still blue.’

Forever:

‘Still later, grief begins to settle
around my heart in tiny drops.’

‘They are still waiting,
fright splashed on their faces,
as they meet my new eyes for the first time.’

Radio Waves:

‘There is in the soul a desire for not thinking.
For being still. Coupled with this
a desire to be strict, yes, and rigorous.
But the soul is also a smooth son of a bitch,
not always trustworthy.’

The Road:

‘Do me a favour this morning. Draw the curtain and come
back to bed.
Forget the coffee. We’ll pretend
we’re in a foreign country, and in love.’

Happiness:

‘Such beauty that for a minute
death and ambition, even love,
don’t enter into this.’

Rain:

‘Would I live my life over again?
Make the same unforgivable mistakes?
Yes, given half a chance. Yes.’

What You Need for Painting:

‘Indifference to everything except your canvas.
The ability to work like a locomotive.
An iron will.’

The White Field:

‘And I understand
that yesterday had its own relentless logic.
Just like today, and all the other days in my life.’

Simple:

‘I go on casually eating from the bowl
of raspberries. If I were dead,
I remind myself, I wouldn’t
be eating them. It’s not so simple.
It is that simple.’

Gift by Czeslaw Milosz:

‘There was no thing on earth I wanted to possess.
I knew no one worth my envying him.
Whatever evil I had suffered, I forgot.’

Anton Chekhov:

‘Misha, don’t run away from your happiness. Take it
while it offers itself to you freely, later you will be running
after it, but you won’t overtake it.’

One More:

‘So there it is. Nothing much else needs to be said, really. What
can be said for a man who chooses to blab on the phone
all day, or else write stupid letters
while he lets his poems go unattended and uncared for, abandoned –
or worse, unattempted. This man doesn’t deserve poems
or they shouldn’t be given to him in any form.
His poems, should he ever produce any more,
ought to be eaten by mice.’

Adultery:

‘Outside
heat lightening
the first heavy drops of rain
strike the patio
Listen
How splendid these gifts’

Favourites: Bankruptcy; Still Looking Out For Number One; The Ashtray (a hymn to ghosting); Still Looking Out For Number One; Rain (Fave); My Crow; Memory [I]; A Haircut; A Poem Not against Songbirds; The Pen; Gift; Return to Kraków in 1880; Poems; Late Fragment

Rain

I woke up this morning with
a truly terrific urge to just lie in bed all day
and immerse myself in the wonderful world of reading. I fought against this temptation for a minute or so.

Then, I happened to look out the window at the rain. The raindrops were falling gently, creating a soft and peaceful rhythm. It was as if the rain was inviting me to surrender to its charm.

And so, I gave over. I put myself entirely
in the keep of this rainy morning. I decided to embrace the moment and let go of all my worries and responsibilities. I allowed myself to be lulled by the sound of the rain and the warmth of my bed.

As I lay there, I couldn't help but wonder: Would I live my life over again? Would I make the same unforgivable mistakes? And the answer that came to me was a resounding yes. Given half a chance, I would do it all again. Because every experience, every mistake, has made me who I am today.

I believe that life is a journey, and sometimes we need to take detours and make mistakes in order to grow and learn. So, I will cherish this rainy morning and all the memories that come with it. And I will look forward to the future, knowing that there are more adventures and mistakes waiting for me.