Carver and Reid

Well, this is not the poetry blog, though poetry sometimes appears hereupon. My father wrote me a very witty email tonight. He is a funny man in print.

And when drunk.

Happy drunks are the best, though our livers do not necessarily agree.

Anyway - this one because I love it so, do not know, if others do too. So even though it should maybe appear elsewhere, I shall place it here, and the one to follow. That previous bit kind of goes to the chorus, in phrasing - not intent, of this song

From the master of those brilliant snapshots of life, Raymond Carver:




Late Fragment




And did you get what

you wanted from this life, even so?

I did.

And what did you want?

To call myself beloved, to feel myself

beloved on the earth.



(1996)




Now, a potential love of mine viewed this as terribly negative as he felt that Carver was writing as a man who was finished with life. It was a finished poem. But no, even though Carver's life was tumultuous and I doubt I would have wanted to have gone through the hurdy-gurdy with him, this is a man who was contented, for this moment, for the writing, the expression he wished to exhibit.

The love previously spoke of, the claytonship, pulled a strange meaning from these lines, too:



maybe that's what I should do

rather than build pedestals from which

even dragons would tumble...




I do not have the rest of that poem...might have deleted it ...but I have the gist. Anyway, his view was that dragons were such a despicable creature that my pedestal must have been built mighty low. Maybe it was self reflection on his part (heh!). The dragon in my mind (my poem) was wondrous, of course, but my pedestals were even higher.

Anyway, that wasn't the second poem I wanted to post, it was this:

Dear Diary



Today my wife called me

a 'pompous old fart'.

We were hugging at the time

and did not spring apart,

though her words were deliberate

and struck at my heart.

It's a fearsome business,

this loving and being loved.

Would anyone try it

if they hadn't been shoved

by a force beyond resistance -

velvet-fisted and iron-gloved?

Christopher Reid (nd?).

I cannot get the lines to indent the way I want them to. I apologise. Every second line should be indented. Anyway, I imagine this man, pot belly, balding, in the arms of his wife. Oh,the cut and thrust of familiarity. And not being able to express his hurt, knowing it would bring an attention that outweighed the slight. And knowing that he probably was a pompous old fart in many ways, but one with love, huh? Funny, I did not notice that it rhymed until now. That's a good thing for me.

I leave you without conclusion.