Raymond Carver: YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT LOVE IS (an evening with Charles Bukowski)

YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT LOVE IS

(an evening with Charles Bukowski)

You don't know what love is Bukowski said

I'm 51 years old look at me

I'm in love with this young broad

I got it bad but she's hung up too

so it's all right man that's the way it should be

I get in their blood and they can't get me out

They try everything to get away from me

but they all come back in the end

They all came back to me except

the one I planted

I cried over that one

but I cried easy in those days

Don't let me get onto the hard stuff man

I get mean then

I could sit here and drink beer

with you hippies all night

I could drink ten quarts of this beer

and nothing it's like water

But let me get onto the hard stuff

and I'll start throwing people out windows

I'll throw anybody out the window

I've done it

But you don't know what love is

You don't know because you've never

been in love it's that simple

I got this young broad see she's beautiful

She calls me Bukowski

Bukowski she says in this little voice

and I say What

But you don't know what love is

I'm telling you what it is

but you aren't listening

There isn't one of you in this room

would recognize love if it stepped up

and buggered you in the ass

I used to think poetry readings were a copout

Look I'm 51 years old and I've been around

I know they're a copout

but I said to myself Bukowski

starving is even more of a copout

So there you are and nothing is like it should be

That fellow what's his name Galway Kinnell

I saw his picture in a magazine

He has a handsome mug on him

but he's a teacher

Christ can you imagine

But then you're teachers too

here I am insulting you already

No I haven't heard of him

or him either

They're all termites

Maybe it's ego I don't read much anymore

but these people who build

reputations on five or six books

termites

Bukowski she says

Why do you listen to classical music all day

Can't you hear her saying that

Bukowski why do you listen to classical music all day

That surprises you doesn't it

You wouldn't think a crude bastard like me

could listen to classical music all day

Brahms Rachmaninoff Bartok Telemann

Shit I couldn't write up here

Too quiet up here too many trees

I like the city that's the place for me

I put on my classical music each morning

and sit down in front of my typewriter

I light a cigar and I smoke it like this see

and I say Bukowski you're a lucky man

Bukowski you've gone through it all

and you're a lucky man

and the blue smoke drifts across the table

and I look out the window onto Delongpre Avenue

and I see people walking up and down the sidewalk

and I puff on the cigar like this

and then I lay the cigar in the ashtray like this

and take a deep breath

and I begin to write

Bukowski this is the life I say

it's good to be poor it's good to have hemorrhoids

it's good to be in love

But you don't know what it's like

You don't know what it's like to be in love

If you could see her you'd know what I mean

She thought I'd come up here and get laid

She just knew it

She told me she knew it

Shit I'm 51 years old and she's 25

and we're in love and she's jealous

Jesus it's beautiful

she said she's claw my eyes out if I came up here and

got laid

Now that's love for you

What do any of you know about it

Let me tell you something

I've met men in jail who had more style

than the people who hang around colleges

and go to poetry readings

They're bloodsuckers who come to see

if the poet's socks are dirty

or if he smells under the arms

Believe me I won't disappoint em

But I want you to remember this

there's only one poet in this room tonight

only one poet in this town tonight

maybe only one real poet in this country tonight

and that's me

What do any of you know about life

What do any of you know about anything

Which of you here has been fired from a job

or else has beaten up your broad

or else has been beaten up by your broad

I was fired from Sears and Roebuck five times

They'd fire me then hire me back again

I was a stockboy for them when I was 35

and then got canned for stealing cookies

I know what's it like I've been there

I'm 51 years old now and I'm in love

This little broad she says

Bukowski

and I say What and she says

I think you're full of shit

and I say baby you understand me

She's the only broad in the world

man or woman

I'd take that from

But you don't know what love is

they all came back to me in the end too

every one of em came back

except that one I told you about

the one I planted

We were together seven years

We used to drink a lot

I see a couple typers in this room but

I don't see any poets

I'm not surprised

You have to have been in love to write poetry

and you don't know what it is to be in love

that's your trouble

Give me some of that stuff

That's right no ice good

That's good that's just fine

So let's get this show on the road

I know what I said but I'll have just one

That tastes good

Okay then let's go let's get this over with

only afterwards don't anyone stand close

to an open window

[Continue reading...]

Excerpt from The Paris Review Interview with Raymond Carver

INTERVIEWER:

Do you regret a lot of things that happened back then when things were so bad?

CARVER:

I can't change anything now. I can't afford to regret. That life is simply gone now, and I can't regret its passing. I have to live in the present. The life back then is gone just as surely - it's as remote to me as if it had happened to somebody I read about in a nineteenth-century novel. I don't spend more than five minutes a month in the past. The past really is a foreign country, and they do do things differently there. Things happen. I really do feel I've had two different lives.

INTERVIEWER:

Can you talk a little about literary influences, or at least name some writers whose work you greatly admire?

CARVER:

Ernest Hemingway is one. The early stories. "Big Two-Hearted River," "Cat in the Rain," "The Three-Day Blow," "Soldier's Home," lots more. Chekhov. I suppose he's the writer whose work I most admire. But who doesn't like Chekhov? I'm talking about his stories now, not the plays. His plays move too slowly for me. Tolstoy. Any of his short stories, novellas, and Anna Karenina. Not War and Peace. Too slow. But The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Master and Man, "How Much Land Does A Man Need?" Tolstoy is the best there is. Isaac Babel, Flannery O'Connor, Frank O'Connor. James Joyce's Dubliners. John Cheever Madame Bovary. Last year I reread that book, along with a new translation of Flaubert's letters written while he was composing - no other word for it - Madame Bovary. Conrad. Updike's Too Far To Go. And there are wonderful writers I've come across in the last year or two like Tobias Wolff. His book of stories In the Garden of the North American Martyrs is just wonderful. Max Schott. Joy Williams. Bobbie Ann Mason. Did I mention her? Well, she's good and worth mentioning twice. Harold Pinter. V.S. Prichett. Years ago I read something in a letter by Chekhov that impressed me. It was a piece of advice to one of his many correspondents, and it went something like this: Friend, you don't have to write about extraordinary people who accomplish extraordinary and memorable deeds. (Understand I was in college at the time and reading plays about princes and dukes and the overthrow of kingdoms. Quests and the like, large undertakings to establish heroes in their rightful places. Novels with larger-than-life heros.) But reading what Chekhov had to say in that letter, and in other letters of his as well, and reading his stories, made me see things differently than I had before. Not long afterwards I read a play and a number of stories by Maxim Gorky, and he simply reinforced in his work what Chekhov had to say. Richard Ford is another fine writer. He's primarily a novelist, but he's also written stories and essays. He's a friend. I have a lot of friends who are good friends, and some of them are good writers. Some not so good.

INTERVIEWER:

What do you do in that case? I mean, how do you handle that - if one of your friends publishes something you don't like?

CARVER:

I don't say anything unless the friend asks me, and I hope he doesn't. But if you're asked you have to say what you think, of course. But you try to say it in a way that it doesn't wreck the friendship. You want your friends to do well and write the best they can. But sometimes their work is a disappointment. You want everything to go well for them, but you have this dread that maybe it won't and there's not much you can do.

[Continue reading...]

Raymond Carver: AT NIGHT THE SALMON MOVE

AT NIGHT THE SALMON MOVE

At night the salmon move

out from the river and into town.

They avoid places with names

like Foster's Freeze, A&W, Smiley's,

but swim close to the tract

homes on Wright Avenue where sometimes

in the early morning hours

you can hear them trying doorknobs

or bumping against Cable TV lines.

We wait up for them.

We leave our back windows open

and call out when we hear a splash.

Morning are a disappointment.

[Continue reading...]

Raymond Carver: YOUR DOG DIES

YOUR DOG DIES

it gets run over by a van.

you find it at the side of the road

and bury it.

you feel bad about it.

you feel bad personally,

but you feel bad for your daughter

because it was her pet,

and she loved it so.

she used to croon it

and let it sleep in her bed.

you write a poem about it.

you call it a poem for your daughter,

about the dog getting run over by a van

and how you looked after it,

took it out into the woods,

and buried it deep, deep,

and that poem turns out so good

you're almost glad the little dog

was run over, or else you'd never

have written that good poem.

then you sit down to write

a poem about writing a poem

about the death of that dog,

but while you're writing you

hear a woman scream

your name, your first name,

both syllables,

and your heart stops.

after a minute, you continue writing.

she screams again.

you wonder how long this can go on.

[Continue reading...]

Raymond Carver: DRINKING WHILE DRIVING

DRINKING WHILE DRIVING

It's August and I have not

read a book in six months

except something called The Retreat From Moscow

by Caulaincourt.

Nevertheless, I am happy

riding in a car with my brother

and drinking from a pint of Old Crow.

We do not have any place in mind to go,

we are just driving.

If I closed my eyes for a minute

I would be lost, yet

I could gladly lie down and sleep forever

beside this road.

My brother nudges me.

Any minute now, something will happen.

[Continue reading...]

Raymond Carver: LOOKING FOR WORK

LOOKING FOR WORK

I've always wanted brook trout

for breakfast.

Suddenly, I find a new path

to the waterfall.

I begin to hurry.

Wake up,

my wife says,

you're dreaming.

But when I try to rise,

the house tilts.

Who's dreaming?

It's noon, she says.

My new shoes wait by the door.

They are gleaming.

[Continue reading...]