Reconhecido como um dos grandes mestres da arte do conto no século XX, Raymond Carver (1938-1988) é autor de uma obra poética que se equipara, em fôlego e intensidade, a sua obra de ficcionista. Mais do que isso: a poesia oferece um ponto de vista privilegiado para compreender a visão de mundo do escritor. Afinal, como observou sua companheira, a escritora Tess Gallagher, "era da corrente espiritual da poesia que ele partia para escrever os contos". Admirador de William Carlos Williams e com um pé na tradição confessional de Robert Lowell e Sylvia Plath, a poesia de Carver é riquíssima em termos de observação da realidade. Mantendo um registro sempre próximo à vida cotidiana, seus poemas, com aparente despretensão, condensam experiências de grande pungência e alta voltagem lírica. Talvez por isso mesmo o leitor brasileiro possa lê-los em chave bandeiriana, como um pequeno manual de alumbramentos. Primeira coletânea da obra poética de Raymond Carver em nosso país, Esta vida reúne em edição bilíngue cinquenta poemas do autor, selecionados e traduzidos por Cide Piquet com base em seus principais livros de poesia - Fogos (1983), Onde a água se junta a outra água (1985), Ultramar (1986) e Um novo caminho para a queda d'água, publicado postumamente em 1989.
Author
Carver was born into a poverty-stricken family at the tail-end of the Depression. He married at 19, started a series of menial jobs and his own career of 'full-time drinking as a serious pursuit', a career that would eventually kill him. Constantly struggling to support his wife and family, Carver enrolled in a writing programme under author John Gardner in 1958. He saw this opportunity as a turning point. Rejecting the more experimental fiction of the 60s and 70s, he pioneered a precisionist realism reinventing the American short story during the eighties, heading the line of so-called 'dirty realists' or 'K-mart realists'. Set in trailer parks and shopping malls, they are stories of banal lives that turn on a seemingly insignificant detail. Carver writes with meticulous economy, suddenly bringing a life into focus in a similar way to the paintings of Edward Hopper. As well as being a master of the short story, he was an accomplished poet publishing several highly acclaimed volumes. After the 'line of demarcation' in Carver's life - 2 June 1977, the day he stopped drinking - his stories become increasingly more redemptive and expansive. Alcohol had eventually shattered his health, his work and his family - his first marriage effectively ending in 1978. He finally married his long-term parter Tess Gallagher (they met ten years earlier at a writers' conference in Dallas) in Reno, Nevada, less than two months before he eventually lost his fight with cancer.
