In a Dark Time … The Eye Begins to See

At times I find myself wishing that Carver’s poetry was more lyrical than it is. In fact, at times the poems seem more like really short short stories than poems. Not having read his short stories, I wonder if I shouldn’t find at least one volume of them and see whether I prefer them to [...]

I’ll have to admit that my favorite Carver poems are those that seem to mention “Tess,” and refer to the last ten years of his life, apparently the happiest years of his life. Those poems, however, lose much of their strength if they are not seen against the whole of his work, which includes [...]

I’ll have to admit that purely for personal reasons, Carver’s “Gravy” is probably my favorite poem. Those few who were reading “In a Dark Time” in December of 2001 will remember that I was diagnosed with throat cancer and told I would be dead in less than six months unless I got immediate [...]