 |  Ramond Carver was born in Clatskanie, Oregon in 1938 and grew up in Yakima, Washington State. His father was a sawmill worker and his mother was a waitress and clerk. He married early and for years writing had to take second place to earning a living for his young family , although he attened the John Gardnrer creative writing class at Chico State College. During this time he undertook many mundane jobs including, hospital porter, textbook editor, dictionary salesman, petrol station attendant and deliveryman. These experiences and his own increasingly desperate domestic circumstances where frequently the subject of his poetry and short stories. Although he published a number of small-press books of poetry and one chapbook of fiction in the 1960's and early 1970's, it was not until the appearance of Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? in 1976 that his work began to reach a wider audience. The following year his luck started to improve: he gave alcohol, which had played a large part in the collapse of his marraige, later that same year he met the poet Tess Gallagher with whom he shared the last eleven years of his life. He started to concentrate on writing again and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1979, followed four years later with the prestigious Mildred and Harold Strauss Living Award. During this highly creative period he wrote three collecions of stories (What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, Cathedral and Elephant), three collection of poetry (Where Water Comes Together With Other Water, In a Marine Light and New Path to the Waterfall), and a collection of stories, essays and poems (Fires). In the last year of his life he was inducted into the American Acedemy of Arts and Letters. He died of cancer on 2nd of Agust 1988.
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Late Night with Fog and Horses
They were in the living room. Saying their
goodbyes. Loss ringing in their ears.
They'd been through a lot together, but now
they couldn't go another step. Besides, for him
there was someone else. Tears were falling
when a horse stepped out of the fog
into the front yard. Then another, and
another. She went outside and said,
"Where did you come from, you sweet horses?"
and moved in amongst them, weeping,
touching their flanks. The horses began
to graze in the front yard.
He made two calls: one call went straight
to he sheriff - "someone's horses are out."
But there was that other call, too.
Then he joined his wife in the front
yard, where they talked and murmured
to the horses together. (Whatever was
happening now was happening in another time.)
Horses cropped the grass in the yard
that night. A red emergency light
flashed as a sedan crept in out of fog.
Voices carried out of the fog.
At the end of that long night,
when they finally put their arms around
each other, their embrace was full of
passion and memory. Each recalled
the other's youth. Now something had ended,
something else rushing in to take its place.
Came the moment of leave-taking itself.
"Goodbye, go on," she said.
And then pulling away.
Much later,
he remembered making a disastrous phone call.
One that had hung on and hung on,
a malediction. It's boiled down
to that. The rest of his life.
Malediction.
My Daughter and Apple Pie
She serves me a piece of it a few minutes
out of the oven. A little steam rises
from the slits on top. Sugar and spice -
cinnamon - burned into the crust.
But she's wearing these dark glasses
in the kitchen at ten o'clock
in the morning - everything nice -
as she watches me break off
a piece, bring it to my mouth,
and blow on it. My daughter's kitchen,
in winter. I fork the pie in
and tell myself to stay out of it.
She says she loves him. No way
Could it be worse.
The Ashtray
you could write a story about this
ashtray, for example, and a man and a
woman. But the man and the woman are
always the two poles of your story.
The North Pole and the South. Every
Story has these two poles - he and she .
- A. P. Chekhov
They're alone at the kitchen table in her friend's
apartment. They'll be alone for another hour, and then
her friend will be back. Outside, it's raining -
the rain coming down like needles, melting last week's
snow. They're smoking and using the ashtray. . . Maybe
just one of them is smoking . . . He's smoking! Never
mind. Anyway, the ashtray is filling up with
cigarettes and ashes.
She's ready to break into tears at any minute.
To plead with him, in fact, though she's proud
And has never asked for anything in her life.
He sees what's coming, recognizes the signs -
a catch in her voice as she brings her fingers
to her locket, the one her mother left her.
He pushes back his chair, gets up, goes over to
the window . . . He wishes it were tomorrow and he
were at the races. He wishes he was out walking,
using his umbrella . . . He strokes his mustache
and wishes he were anywhere except here. But
he doesn't have and choice in the matter. He's got
to put a good face on this for everybody's sake.
God knows, he never meant for things to come
to this. But it's sink or swim now. A wrong
move and he stands to lose her friend, too.
Her breathing slows. She watches him but
doesn't say anything. She knows, or thins she
knows, where this is leading. She passes a hand
over her eyes, leans forward and puts her head
in her hands. She's done this a few times
before, but has no idea it's something
that drives him wild. He looks away and grinds
his teeth. He lights a cigarette, shakes out
the match, stands a minute longer at the window.
Then walks back to the table and sits
down with a sigh. He drops the match in the ashtray.
She reaches for his hand, and he lets her
take it. Why not? Where's the harm?
Let her. His mind's made up. She covers his
fingers with kisses, tears fall on to his wrist.
He draws on his cigarette and looks at her
as a man would look indifferently on
a cloud, a tree, or a field of oats at sunset.
He narrows his eyes against the smoke. From time
to time he uses the ashtray as he waits
for her to finish weeping.
Cheers
Vodka chased with coffee. Each morning
I hang the sign on the door:
OUT TO LUNCH
But no one pays attention; my friends
look at the sign and
sometimes leave little notes,
or else they call - Come out and play,
Ray - mond.
Once my son, that bastard,
slipped in and left me a colored egg
and a walking stick.
I think he drank some of my vodka.
And last week my wife dropped by
with a can of beef soup
and a carton of tears.
She drank some of my vodka, too, I think,
then left hurriedly in a strange car
with a man I'd never seen before.
They don't understand; I'm fine,
just fine where I am, for any day now
I shall be, I shall be, I shall be . . .
I intend to take all the time in this world,
consider everything, even miracles,
yet remain on guard, ever
more careful, more watchful,
against those who would sin against me,
against those who would steal vodka,
against those who would do me harm.
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