Raymond Carver Festival Suite
Ray—
hello from Clatskenie Oregon w/sunshine + cool breeze coming up the Columbia River where I/m tired + my back aches still but here to celebrate you this weekend w/a writing festival in yr name organized by the Clatskenie Arts Foundation—who wouldve thunk you/d be driving the economy here in yr home town for a few days among all the closed-up restaurants + bars—only Colvins still going tho not sure if it was around when you lived here decades ago its been decades since I read you—just about two ago when I went thru a second go-thru of What We Talk About When We Talk About Love in Jackson Hole Wyoming one summer on the helitack crew there helirappel actually sliding down a rope out of a helicopter to get to fires tho I think we only really did it once but was something I/d wanted to try + liked b/c every rappel was terrifying tho you learn to trust the equipment if not he people but re-finding you in a used bookstore there—I think the first time was back in college Michigan State on my own when I was already reading lots all the time but following you down from the Hemingway line of minimalism tho was always interesting to think about how some people claimed yr style was actually yr editors style—that he stripped you down took away yr adverbs adjectives which sounds like a good editor to me tho also read somewhere way back that you resented it + yr later stuff has more something that I like the earlier stuff so I dont know but I think Susan Sontag is right that (in prose at least?) style is content vs the poetry ‘form is content/content form’ exchange in which case was yr content taken from you b/c I recently had a minor similar happenstance of a lit mag taking a story of mine enthusiastically then an ‘assigned’ editor The New Yorker-ized it but what was I gonna do? say no? even tho neither of us was getting paid?
II
following the Clatskenie River curving thru town making its way north to flow into the Columbia tho doesnt feel like the coast here yet—more like a nestled farm valley among forest hills sitting on a picnic table hoping I dont get attacked by the weird-colored ducks snoozing around—those hills state forest so third or fourth growth stands single-species + too thick to walk thru tho I think theres a path nearby trying to absorb as much sun as I can to get rid of this minor cough I got at my sisters b/c children are vectors of disease while I keep waiting for the the working class to rise up w/guillotines but everyones on screens—I/d like to hang out in a bar w/o tvs w/you talk about Hemingway + Pushcarts + women + the rain
“Yes, work. The going
to
what lasts.”
III
noted: Clatskenie actually ends w/an ai sound
the festival in yr honor started this morning at the Birkenfeld theater just the hill w/a scrum of people looking at books for sale eating cake which I immediately had to leave for my sanity— two readings by two poets the first of whom was great—Marj Hogan—keeping to the theme‚yr theme—or work—the second of whom didnt seem to understand how microphones work but ok—out of the theater into the sunshine down to the farmers market which has nothing I want—no fruit or banana bread or nada—pull up another picnic table at the river away from people—I may have only read you after I saw the movie Shortcuts directed by Robert Altman based some of yr short stories (and which I have learned you helped with the screenplay!) which I liked—the disjointedness of doing that as a film—same thing w/Larry Browns Big Bad Love later on directed by Arliss Howard + I was always interested in how you never wrote a novel which someone —maybe you but I cant remember—said came from having a job and a family and only time to write short texts which makes sense but also could just be that you liked short texts + that was only ever what was going to come out tho novels are where the money is or they were + getting a creative writing teaching gig was easier back then tho I bet you taught composition at some point too + I/m at the point where if I were to go back to teaching comp I/d just treat them as creative writing classes—just like the writer Janet Kauffman told me long ago + I kind of did anyway—at least using creative narrative essays (like Abbey and Bukowski whom I/m sure you also liked) while throwing poems in as ways to make writing fun or at least engaging or at least not painful to my students but now AI looms over every class so that teachers are going back to in-class essays in blue books which defeats the idea of writing as a process so I just watch for fires instead
IV
what took me a while to appreciate was your wife Tess Gallagher—fine writer in her own right who didnt really peak until you were gone but the festival reinforced + esp added to my idea of how special a couple you both were—two poets in synch living a life of maybe voluntary poverty not to mention she got you off the juice giving you ten more years of sober creativity—she was here—topped off a reading up at ‘The Castle’ in the afternoon which we all huffed up to in the sun tho I/d/ve rather they just did it back at the theater—writers shouldnt be mucking around in rich peoples houses but she was great enthusiastic energetic funny—we would have all just loved to listen to her between-poem stories + I love especially the story about you two in the program notes about driving through town here stopping in the Safeway parking lot deciding to give an impromptu poetry reading standing up through the car moonroof reading poems to whomever would listen—a similar ritual happens a the festival at the endish of the day where we all gathered in the alley where theres a huge mural of you so that Tess could stand up thru someones moonroof and which were all great. I thought you/d want to know that the last one was yr Late Fragment about wanting to be beloved + Tess + many in the audience recited it by heart
V
the mural including this quote from you:
I’ll take all the time I please this afternoon
before leaving my place alongside this river
also a small sculpture in the park across from the library w/yr picture + the great quote (from a woman character)—Will you please be quiet, please!—which should be my motto + which was also on the back of festival t-shirts: you have merch! or youre on merch! I cant imagine my hometown of Jackson Michigan ever having a sculpture or statue or picture or mural of me but if they do it should be me flipping them off—that would be satisfying but at 57 now looking like I/ll be ending my days in blessed obscurity tho still publish individual pieces in lit mags here + there—still no Pushcart alas b/c I remember the anecdote of when you got in the Pushcart Prize anthology you slept w/the book under yr pillow tho I dont think the current editors would like yr stuff anymore—its all ‘language’ poetry and The New Yorker stories (which are no longer Raymond Carver The New Yorker stories) but oh well we write for the process yes? but I/m not inclined to write novels anymore—wrote seven over the decades which were challenging + interesting but not inclined to spend that much time + effort anymore unless of course I get the inspiration for something different to try for the curiosity of it—I dont know the last one I wrote because the ghost of singer Dawn Crosby came in my dreams three nights in a row asking me to do it—you cant deny ghosts but the Big Four or Three wouldnt want it + lit agents dont want it + the indie presses publish their friends
VI
all the poetry I heard at the festival was good if not great + the type which exists outside of academia + The New Yorker or even Harper’s which traces a line down from Whitman Williams Bishop the Beats + maybe Bukowski + definitely Mary Oliver in a melange of lyric-for-the-individual singing for + sharing wisdom rather than being clever tho clever can include humor + you were the only one w/a sense of humor + a sense of wisdom + I suppose this is what regional poetry is—anything outside of New York or San Francisco + you are from the Pacific Northwest—not sure you spent much time away from it tho also rooted in the working class tho the working class when they tolerate poetry at all only tolerate what they can understand while academic poetry since the 90s has always been about breaking apart sense ostensibly to break about the language of the oppressor but all they leave behind is Babel but yes nothing more cringy than a poet trying to wise tho when it works it works—WS Merwin—I dont know if I consider myself a PNW poet—I/ve lived off + on in Oregon for fifteen years now but still feel like a Michigander somehow to my embarrassment tho when the poetry transcends like yrs you becomes a national treasure (international even) even as not even yr stories get discussed in MFA programs much less undergrad + if Sontag is right + style is content what does this say that yr style is rejected even as all New Yorkers would still claim to like Chekhov who was yr main influence but for example at the festival there was a young man—20—from Clatskenie who was introducing the afternoon poets who told all us adults how much yr writing (style?) had shaped him as a writer + person + again all those people some of them youngsters—who recited yr beloved Fragment from heart about wanting to be beloved—we live in a lonely country but all this writing just to tell you that you are
