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Tess Gallagher's poems in this collection chart the painful road of mourning, memory, and change following the death of her beloved husband, fiction writer Raymond Carver. From feelings of sharing death to memories of valentines they gave each other, and then in an upward arch through Zen imagery of cherry blossoms and curved bridges, Gallagher's poems come to no easy rest on the banks of a new life and new loves. But for all those who have experienced tragedy, the poems relate a common assurance that a crossing into survival can be reached.
From Publishers Weekly
Gallagher's ( Amplitude ) new collection is dedicated to her husband, Raymond Carver, who died of cancer in 1988. One cannot help being moved by the emotion that grounds the work, even if the poems sometimes affect us more because of what lies behind them than because of what shows through. Some focus on ordinary objects now invested both with the warmth of remembrance and the agony of grief ("Some gifts are sent / only to haunt"), while others recall moments of leave-taking, such as Carver planting a tree, knowing " 'Even this thing is going to outlive /me.' " The poem "Wake" ("We were dead / a little while together then, serene / and afloat on the strange broad canopy / of the abandoned world") is one of the most visceral. However, slackness is evident in "Sad Moments" ("we are fit for modulation and /whim, for cloves and lace, or / that dim creaturely train rushing past us") and bathos in "He Would Have" ("Any unexpected bounty adds him like seasoning / to the day"). Still, Gallagher's best poems powerfully evoke the ambiguous life of the survivor, who can say, "My love's early death has scraped away my future," yet go on charting a life that has become a "chaotic laboratory of broken approaches." Author tour.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --Ce texte fait référence à l'édition Relié .
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --Ce texte fait référence à l'édition Relié .
