Fires Essays, Poems, Stories

by CARVER, RAYMOND

• ISBN13: 9780679722397
• ISBN10: 0679722394
• Edition: Revised
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1989-06-18
• Publisher: Vintage

Summary

"You should read Fires now. These stories and poems...show the enormous talent of Raymond Carver beginning to take hold." -- San Francisco Chronicle "Seminal in Carver studies...A disparate collection of work bound by a unity of vision and obsession." -- Los Angeles Herald Examiner "Carver's most revealing book...This collection confirms the worth of Raymond Carver's work...Like bright birds in distant trees, Carver's stories appear in flashes, glimpses; Fires reveals the arc of his purposeful flight." -- Boston Globe

Author Biography

Raymond Carver was born in Clatskanie, Oregon, in 1938. His first collection of stories, Will You Please Be Quiet, Please (a National Book Award nominee in 1977), was followed by What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, Cathedral (nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in 1984), and Where I'm Calling From in 1988, when he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He died August 2, 1988, shortly after completing the poems of A New Path to the Waterfall.

Table of Contents

Essays
My Father's Life	p. 13
On Writing	p. 22
Fires	p. 28
John Gardner: The Writer as Teacher	p. 40
Poems
Drinking While Driving	p. 53
Luck	p. 54
Distress Sale	p. 56
Your Dog Dies	p. 58
Photograph of My Father in His Twenty-Second year	p. 59
Hamid Ramouz (1818-1906)	p. 60
Bankruptcy	p. 61
The Baker	p. 62
Iowa Summer	p. 63
Alcohol	p. 64
For Semra, with Martial Vigor	p. 66
Looking for work	p. 69
Cheers	p. 70
Rogue River Jet-Boat Trip, Gold Beach, Oregon, July 4, 1977	p. 71
You Don't Know What Love Is	p. 75
Morning, Thinking of Empire	p. 83
The Blue Stones	p. 84
Tel Aviv and Life on The Mississippi	p. 86
The News Carried to Macedonia	p. 88
The Mosque in Jaffa	p. 90
Not Far from Here	p. 91
Sudden Rain	p. 92
Balzac	p. 93
Country Matters	p. 94
This Room	p. 95
Rhodes	p. 96
Spring, 480 B.C.	p. 98
Near Klamath	p. 101
Autumn	p. 102
Winter Insomnia	p. 103
Prosser	p. 104
At Night the Salmon Move	p. 105
With a Telescope Rod on Cowiche Creek	p. 106
Poem for Dr. Pratt, a Lady Pathologist	p. 107
Wes Hardin: From a Photograph	p. 108
Marriage	p. 110
The Other Life	p. 112
The Mailman as Cancer Patient	p. 113
Poem for Hemingway & W. C. Williams	p. 114
Torture	p. 115
Bobber	p. 116
Highway 99E from Chico	p. 117
The Cougar	p. 118
The Current	p. 120
Hunter	p. 121
Trying to Sleep Late On a Saturday Morning in November	p. 122
Louise	p. 123
Poem for Karl Wallenda, Aerialist Supreme	p. 124
Deschutes River	p. 126
Forever	p. 127
Stories
Distance	p. 131
The Lie	p. 141
The Cabin	p. 145
Harry's Death	p. 157
The Pheasant	p. 165
Where is Everyone?	p. 173
So Much Water so Close to Home	p. 185
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