Unexpectedly, this one's had an effect on me; parts of it have stuck with me at the level of both individual images and, more generally, how these poems made me feel as I was reading them.
As explained in the graceful introduction by Tess Gallagher - Carver's second wife and his intimate collaborator in the book's conception and compilation - A New Path is a late collection, most written by Carver following his diagnosis with lung cancer and in the knowledge that his (untimely) death was near. They tend towards simplicity, with feeling and meaning readily accessible and lit by a spare, tight-joined lyricism and sometimes a verging - traversing - along the boundary between prose and verse, and many take as their subject mortality and death, in a way that highlights how death and life are connected, and only make sense in relation to the other. The overall mood is, while sombre, consistently celebratory and affirmatory, and I found it rather moving - these poems throw out an empathetic bridge to the reader by drawing on both Carver's own very personal situation and its universality.
Interspersed throughout are very short extracts from Chekhov - contextualised in this way, the latent poetry that Gallagher and Carver saw in the Russian's prose is brought out - as well as from others, adding to the overall effect.
(a gift from Anna F)
As explained in the graceful introduction by Tess Gallagher - Carver's second wife and his intimate collaborator in the book's conception and compilation - A New Path is a late collection, most written by Carver following his diagnosis with lung cancer and in the knowledge that his (untimely) death was near. They tend towards simplicity, with feeling and meaning readily accessible and lit by a spare, tight-joined lyricism and sometimes a verging - traversing - along the boundary between prose and verse, and many take as their subject mortality and death, in a way that highlights how death and life are connected, and only make sense in relation to the other. The overall mood is, while sombre, consistently celebratory and affirmatory, and I found it rather moving - these poems throw out an empathetic bridge to the reader by drawing on both Carver's own very personal situation and its universality.
Interspersed throughout are very short extracts from Chekhov - contextualised in this way, the latent poetry that Gallagher and Carver saw in the Russian's prose is brought out - as well as from others, adding to the overall effect.
(a gift from Anna F)
