All of Us ─ The Collected Poems

"Carver's poetry is like an almost invisible strand of fishing line reeling us all together, connecting us by the heart." --San Francisco Examiner and Chronicle

This prodigiously rich collection suggests that Raymond Carver was not only America's finest writer of short fiction, but also one of its most large-hearted and affecting poets.??Like Carver's stories, the more than 300 poems in All of Us are marked by a keen attention to the physical world; an uncanny ability to compress vast feeling into discreet moments; a voice of conversational intimacy, and an unstinting sympathy.

This complete edition brings together all the poems of Carver's five previous books, from Fires to the posthumously published No Heroics, Please.??It also contains bibliographical and textual notes on individual poems; a chronology of Carver's life and work; and a moving introduction by Carver's widow, the poet Tess Gallagher.

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 byWhat We Talk About When We Talk About Love, Cathedral (nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in 1984), andWhere 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 ofA New Path to the Waterfall.