Seize Fires: Essays, Poems, Stories Curated By Raymond Carver Distributed As Interactive EBook

than sixty stories, poems, and essays are included in this wideranging collection by the extravagantly versatile Raymond Carver, Two of the storieslater revised for What We Talk About When We Talk About Loveare particularly notable in that between the first and the final versions, we see clearly the astounding process of Carvers literary development.
Raymond Carver was definitely inspired by Earnest Hemingway and it shows, He writes female stories really well!only cos the pomes weren't as strong as the rest,

Writers don't need trick or gimmicks or even necessarily need to be the smartest fellows on the block, At the risk of appearing foolish, a writer sometimes needs to be able to just stand and gape at this or that thing a sunset or an old shoe in absolute and simple amazement

Fires is a collection ofessays, aboutpoems andshort stories.
The essays and stories are very very good, the poems some good some paled in comparison to the prose,

Three of those essays are about writing and the influences Carver had on his work his teacher John Gardner and his own children.
I think it is essential reading for anyone who wants to write, writes or wants to understand his work or any literary fiction better, It also sheds light to his own famously sparse style,

And exactly as I suspected revision is an essential part of it, Carver didn't make it big not before years of writing and he is the prime example of how talent alone does nothing at all, his style was crafted consciously.

There is also a very moving essay about his father, Like the characters in his own stories, his father was a simple workingclass man, With that essay, I understood why some of his stories seem so tender to me, It is the intimate daily routines of men and women opposed to the harsh realities of getting by and making ends meet, Having a whiskey, smoking in bed, watching a TV set on a sunny day with the curtains drawn, wanting to have sex but being too lazy or tired for it but not minding either cos there is a warm familiarity that permits the lack of it.
The home becomes this warm sanctuary where the characters hide from the world,

The stories in this collection were a bit more nervous and had more sinister undercurrents than the rest that I have read so far.
I don't think this can be done any better, Maybe Shirley Jackson excels in it at the relatively same level, That the reader can feel the unsaid even more strongly than what is apparent, So Much Water So Close to Home was unforgettable in that regard but all the stories were brilliant,

I think having books like this makes it quite difficult to explore new authors with gusto because often even rereading Carver or any other writer at the same level by far surpasses reading anything contemporary.
Essays
Poems
Stories

Can you imagine me rating poems four This man is good, really good, I mean it! I think it's because his poems are like short stories, And I'm not even discussing the essays and stories,
I love Carver's writing, It's so sincere and real, It's life. Life happens. You know when you're in middle school, and there's this boy, you've seen him around and know he has a good reputation, so you arrange to spend some time with him, but then decide after all that you like him, but you don't likelike him That's what my first Raymond Carver book felt like.
This one has essays, poems and short stories, so I figured it was a good sampling of his work, I loved the essays, the poems were okay but no cold chills running up my spine, and the short stories were a bit uneven with ambiguous, abrupt endings.
The last two stories almost made me change my mind and go steady with him, "Where Is Everyone" made me laugh, and I need a man with a sense of humor, "So Much Water So Close to Home" was perfectly chilling, and I saw a glimpse of what might could be ahead in our relationship, So for now we are on a break, but I'd like us to remain friends, and, who knows Maybe another date down the road, It could happen. In many ways, this selection of Raymond Carvers essays, poems and stories is the perfect introduction to this iconic literary figure, Unlike other collections, where readers are only given his finely crafted fiction or poetry to decipher, here we are first presented with four essays in which Carver speaks about his development as a writer and the factors the drove him to create.

Next, we are given a sample of Carvers poems, which although not too varied in style or trope, are nonetheless beautiful examples of a writers ability to take a plain spoken moment and open it up to universal themes, such as we see in the contemporary work of Kim Addonizio and Billy Collins.

Finally, in a most appropriate conclusion, we are left with Carvers short stories, which are simply astonishing in their unadorned genius, Even though he claims his first teacher, John Gardner, gave him the invaluable advice “to have the right words saying what he wants them to say.
Nothing vague or blurred, no smokedglass prose”, his stories are actually absorbing studies of how to carefully give readers information by never saying too much and leaving enough space for the readers life to interact with the text.
For example, in “The Lie”, he never tells us what the wifes deception really is, although sexual infidelity is strongly implied, but instead concentrates on perfectly capturing the skewed power dynamics in a relationship being torn apart by deception.
Consequently, he captures the emotional truth of the moment, without distracting the reader with the lurid tale of her lie, as well as allowing the story to be applicable to many different troubling points in a romantic relationship.
The only misstep Carver makes is in the last story, “So Much Water So Close to Home,” by telling it from the wifes first person perspective.
Even though it is she who is telling the story, readers are still left with much more insight into the husband than the wife, and she is portrayed as a onenote character driven by an inexplicable paranoia.
The writing is still flawless and the story intriguing as any mystery novel, but the pointofview seems to miss the mark, Regardless, it is a small flaw in this stellar collection of work and again, just as the essays do, gives us a glimpse into Raymond Carver as a working writer, struggling like all of us to nail that scene, that line, that character, in the brief time our lives give us to create.

Man, a beauty of a book for Carver lovers Carlovers, A mix of nonfiction essays, poems, short stories, a substantial interview, and an afterword from Ray himself, He was a commonplace man with a patient eye for poignancy, poetry, and reality, "So Much Water So Close to Home" is one of my favorite stories nowboth the narrator and Ray in the interview question if things ever really change.
I expect beauty amp tragedy to shape amp redirect my lifeits unnerving when they glance off me and I feel much the same, Another excellent collection from Raymond Carver, this one a selection ofessays,poems andshort stories,

I did not read this book in the "correct" order, reading the poems first, then the short stories, finishing with the essays, but I think it would be best to begin with the essays as it is here that Carver talks about his children, his father, his writing and his influences, giving a little context to the content of some of his poems and short stories.
I particularly liked the section where he talks about being in a laundromat in Iowa City in thes, him and his wife struggling to make ends meet, and it dawns on him that nothing could be as important or make as much difference in his life as the fact that he was a father of two children.


The poems were good too, but as someone who is not all that into poetry they were not the strongest part of the collection for me.
The themes here are comparable to those of Carver's fiction marital issues, alcoholism, hunting and solitude or lack of it,

I'd read somewhere that a couple of these short stories had been published in other collections before, that these were early drafts of those stories, but I only recognised the final one, "So much water so close to home".
The other stories that stood out to me were "The pheasant", "The lie" and "The cabin", all brilliant examples of how Carver was an unparalleled master of the short story.


Fires might be a good introduction to Carver you get to sample all types of his writing but I think overall the stories in sitelinkWill You Please Be Quiet, Please remain the best.
Still a great collection and well worth checking out! Ik wilde dit boek vooral voor de essays en gedichten lezen, maar was uiteindelijk ook wel benieuwd naar de verhalen.
Ik heb vooral veel gelezen over mannen met een alcoholverslaving en vissen als hobby, Hoewel ik bij sommige verhalen op een gegeven moment een beetje afdwaalde door vaak wat vlakkere personages elke keer iemand met een drankprobleem als karakter, dan ken je het op een gegeven moment wel, en alles een beetje over niets ging, ben ik uiteindelijk toch ook wel gecharmeerd door zijn stijl.
Het laatste verhaal maakte ook wel veel goed, overigens, En ik moest sowieso eens Raymond Carver gaan lezen Þrískipt bók sem inniheldur ritgerðir, ljóð og smásögur,
Það kom mér á óvart að ég hafði mest gaman af fyrsta hlutanum, ritgerðunum,
Fyrsta ritgerðin fjallar um föður Carver og er sérstaklega átakanleg, Sú saga finnst manni líka útskýra að einhverju leyti vesældina sem fylgdi Carver og sítekningu sumra af hans helstu umfjöllunarefnum brotin heimili, vond samskipti og drykkju.

Hinar ritgerðirnar fjalla um skrif, það að byrja að skrifa og byrjun Caver í skrifum, Mér fannst þær innihalda einhvern meiri sannleika en maður finnur oft í sambærilegum greinum um skrif þó þetta sé reyndar alltaf sama sagan sem er endurtekin þannig séð.

Ljóðin fannst mér eiginlega sísti hlutinn þó hann sé stærstur, Þeim er skipt í fjóra kafla þar sem fyrsti og síðasti kaflinn eru bestir, Annar kaflinn er langt ljóð lagt í munn Bukowski sem ég kunni ekkert sérstaklega við og þriðji kaflinn inniheldur mikið af ljóðum um sögulega viðburði sem mér finnst lítið spennandi og tengi ekkert sérstaklega við.
Bestu ljóðin eru þegar hann kjarnar einhvern ömurleika eða dregur upp einhverja súra blöndu af mannlífi og náttúru.

Síðasti hlutinn inniheldur smásögur, þar af nokkrar sem ég hafði lesið, Það skemmtilega við þessar endurteknu sögur var þó að hann hafði breytt þeim, lengt þær og bætt við ýmsum atriðum sem voru ekki í þeim við fyrsta lestur.

Heilt á litið nokkuð gott safn, .