Author(s): Raymond Carver

Poetry

Raymond Carver finished A New Path To The Waterfall shortly before his death in August 1988. These fifty poems--as hard and clear and emotionally pure as his short stories--chart a human journey: false starts and redemptions, the discovery of happiness, memory, and leave-taking, and the full apprehension of mortality. An avowal of love, this collection is also a haunting record of Carver's approach to death. Raymond Carver, author of Where I'm Calling From, is widely considered one of the great short story writers of our time. A New Path to the Waterfall was Carver's last book, and shows a writer telling the truth as best as he knows how in the time left to him. The sixty-odd poems in this collection are linked by Carver with selections from other writers, most notably Chekhov, whose work was an inspiration and a guide, and by the cumulative force of the life and death questions he poses in them. As Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet guided countless readers discovering their true love and work, Carver's book will guide those in the process of celebrating a limited life and mourning the inescapable end of it. A New Path to the Waterfall is an essential book for those who admire Carver's work, and testament to the transcendent strength of the human spirit. In her introductory essay, Tess Gallagher, Carver's companion and fellow writer, lays out the circumstances of their last years together with matter-of-fact grace. First published 1989.