A NEW PATH TO THE WATERFALL - Softcover

Raymond Carver

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0002710625 ISBN 13: 9780002710626

Publisher: The Harvill Press, 1990

Synopsis

Raymond Carver, author of Where I'm Calling From, is widely considered one of the great short story writers of our time. A New Path to the Waterfall was Carver's last book, and shows a writer telling the truth as best as he knows how in the time left to him. The sixty-odd poems in this collection are linked by Carver with selections from other writers, most notably Chekhov, whose work was an inspiration and a guide, and by the cumulative force of the life and death questions he poses in them. As Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet guided countless readers discovering their true love and work, Carver's book will guide those in the process of celebrating a limited life and mourning the inescapable end of it. A New Path to the Waterfall is an essential book for those who admire Carver's work, and testament to the transcendent strength of the human spirit. In her introductory essay, Tess Gallagher, Carver's companion and fellow writer, lays out the circumstances of their last years together with matter-of-fact grace.

About this title

Review:

After-glow
Another Mystery
Artaud
The Attic
Caution
Cherish
Conspirators
For The Record
Gravy
His Bathrobe Pockets Stuffed With Notes
Hummingbird (for Tess)
In A Greek Orthodox Church Near Daphne
The Kitchen
Late Fragment
Lemonade
Letter
Looking For Work (2)
The March Into Russia
Margo
The Moon, The Train
Mriacle
My Wife
The Net
No Need
The Offending Eel
On An Old Photograph Of My Son
One More
Out
The Painter & The Fish
Poems
Proposal
Quiet Nights
The Sturgeon
Summer Fog
Sunday Night
Suspenders
Thermopylae
This Word Love
Threat
Through The Boughs
The Toes
Transformation
Two Worlds
Wake Up
What The Doctor Said
Wine
Woman Bathing
The World Book Salesman
The Young Girls
Return To Krakow In 1880
Wet Picture
The Name
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®

From Library Journal:

Though Carver is generally acknowledged to be a master of the short story, his first published work was poetry, and this collection, his last work, was completed shortly before his untimely death. His poetry is as recognizably his own as his stories and like them evokes depths of meaning beneath a surface simplicity. In her moving introduction, Carver's widow, writer Tess Gallagher, notes how often a particular poem calls to mind a corresponding story, and the reverse is also true. Indeed, to know Carver by his prose is to know him only partially. Master at illuminating those often mundane moments that starkly dramatize entire lives, Carver was also master at creating mood, and many of these poems have a striking lyrical intensity, especially when Carver unflinchingly faces death while celebrating life. A coda to a remarkable literary career.
- Charles Michaud, Turner Free Lib., Randolph, Mass.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: The Harvill Press
• Publication date: 1990
• ISBN 10: 0002710625
• ISBN 13: 9780002710626
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 160