Carver Raymond - The Poetry of Raymond Carver: Against the Current

THE POETRY OF RAYMOND CARVER

Against the Current

SANDRA LEE KLEPPE

Hedmark University College, Norway

ASHGATE

Sandra Lee Kleppe 2014

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.

Sandra Lee Kleppe has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

Kleppe, Sandra Lee, 1964

The Poetry of Raymond Carver: Against the Current / by Sandra Lee Kleppe.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-4724-1167-9 (hardcover: alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-4724-1168-6 (ebook) ISBN 978-1-4724-1169-3 (epub)

1. Carver, Raymond, 19381988Criticism and interpretation. I. Title.

PS3553.A7894Z74 2014

813.54dc23

2013034265

ISBN: 9781472411679 (hbk)

ISBN: 9781472411686 (ebk PDF)

ISBN: 9781472411693 (ebk ePUB)

Anyone who has written a book of this size and scope will know that it takes thousands of hours of work and concentration to bring it to completion. During those hours, spread out over several years, many people contributed in small and large ways to the progression of this book, and I will not be able to acknowledge them all here. First and foremost, all poems by Raymond Carver cited in this book are reprinted with permission of the copyright holders, as specified on the Copyright Permissions Page above. The painting on the cover of this book, Rays Ghost Fish (1994) is a portrait by the artist Alfredo Arregun, who was a close friend of Carver. It was commissioned by Carvers widow Tess Gallagher and gifted to the North Olympic Library in Port Angeles, Washington, where it hangs in their Carver room. It is reprinted here with permission from the library.

My employer, Hedmark University College, has for the past three years provided me with a work environment directly conducive to the completion of the manuscript. My most intense writing period was during the spring semester of 2012, spent as a visiting scholar at the University of Washington (UW), Seattle. This stay was financed by a generous grant from the Research Council of Norway through their Leiv Eiriksson mobility program.

Susan Williams of the English Department at the UW and Paul Constantine of the UW Libraries extended kind invitations to me as a visiting scholar and assisted with the paperwork and other practicalities that paved the way for a productive research semester. I am grateful to Sandra Kroupa at the UW special collections, who gave me access to rare and first editions of Carvers work, kindly fetching these gems from the vault, and making copies of particular passages from out-of-print work not available anywhere on the internet. During my stay in Seattle, Shanna Nelson provided me with a writing sanctuary in her home, and I could not have had a better space for my creative and intellectual work, or a more gracious hostess.

Angela Sorby has read and offered extensive critical feedback on most of the manuscript at various points of its progression over the years. Her keen insights and constructive suggestions have made this a better book. The conception and materialization of this book project has in many ways paralleled the conception and materialization of The International Raymond Carver Society (IRCS). My friends and colleagues there represent an intellectual and congenial community who have provided support, input of ideas, and constructive feedback on what now seems endless conference papers that tested various chapters as they were coming into being. Co-founder of the IRCS Robert Miltner has played an especially important role in this network and all its activities, and his dissertation from 1998, Sounds Like the Story of A Life: The Poetry of Raymond Carver laid the foundation for my own monograph and is a crucial work for any understanding of Carvers contribution to American poetry.

My librarian at Hedmark University College, Karianne Hagen, has been a steadfast assistant in this project over the last three years, embarking on every wild goose chase for source or citation I requested, ordering copies of articles and filling the shelves of the college library with relevant works on Carver and the theoretical topics discussed in this book. I believe our library is becoming an important center for Carver studies in Scandinavia as a result of this fruitful collaboration between scholar and librarian.

Perhaps the single most important event in the transition from manuscript to published book was the report provided by Ashgates blind reviewer. Instead of picking apart the many weaknesses in the draft, for every draft will have some, the reviewer argued for the necessity of a book on Carvers poetry career and cogently presented reasons why this particular book filled that need. I hope readers as well will be able to overlook any flaws they will encounter herein, so that the book can point them beyond its own academic talk to the miracles of Carvers poems themselves.

Finally, this book is dedicated to my familymy parents, siblings, and sonthe loving scaffold without which nothing of value is possible. And last but not least, thanks to Tom H. for being on the right pier at the right time.

Excerpts from Looking for Work, The Sturgeon, The Painter and the Fish, What the Doctor Said, and Proposal from A New Path to the Waterfall copyright 1989 by the Estate of Raymond Carver. Used by permission of Grove/Atlantic, Inc. Any third party use of this material, outside of this publication, is prohibited.

Citations from The Current, The Brass Ring, Betrayal, The Sunbather, to Herself, Woman Bathing, For Semra, With Martial Vigor, The Blue Stones, Your Dog Dies, The Autopsy Room, The Man Outside, Locking Yourself Out, Then Trying to Get Back In, Distress Sale, Late Night with Fog and Horses, Mother, Ask Him, Near Klamath At Night the Salmon Move, Bobber, Poem for Dr Pratt, a Lady Pathologist, The Mailman as Cancer Patient, A Tall Order, Winter Insomnia, The River, Eagles, Cutlery and Letter are from All of Us: The Collected Poems by Raymond Carver, copyright 1996 by Tess Gallagher. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. Any third party use of this material, outside this publication, is prohibited. Interested parties must apply directly to Random House, Inc. for permission.

Citations from The Current, The Brass Ring, Betrayal, The Sunbather, to Herself, Woman Bathing, For Semra, With Martial Vigor, The Blue Stones, Your Dog Dies, The Autopsy Room, The Man Outside, Locking Yourself Out, Then Trying to Get Back In, Distress Sale, Late Night with Fog and Horses, Mother, Ask Him, Near Klamath At Night the Salmon Move, Bobber, Poem for Dr Pratt, a Lady Pathologist, The Mailman as Cancer Patient, A Tall Order, Winter Insomnia, The River, Eagles, Cutlery, Letter, Looking for Work, The Sturgeon, The Painter and the Fish, What the Doctor Said, and Proposal are from