Friday

May 25, 2001

Waiting

by Raymond Carver

FRIDAY, 25 MAY 2001
Listen (RealAudio) | How to listen

Poem: "Waiting," by Raymond Carver, from All of Us: The Collected Poems (Alfred A. Knopf).

Waiting

Left off the highway and
down the hill. At the
bottom, hang another left.
Keep bearing left. The road
will make a Y. Left again.
There's a creek on the left.
Keep going. Just before
the road ends, there'll be
another road. Take it
and no other. Otherwise,
your life will be ruined
forever. There's a log house
with a shake roof, on the left.
It's not that house. It's
the next house, just over
a rise. The house
where trees are laden with
fruit. Where phlox, forsythia,
and marigold grow. It's
the house where the woman
stands in the doorway
wearing the sun in her hair. The one
who's been waiting
all this time.
The woman who loves you.
The one who can say,
"What's kept you?"

On this day in 1994, Russian author Alexander Solzhenitsyn, after 20 years abroad, returned to Russia.

It's the birthday of novelist Jamaica Kincaid, born in St. John's, Antigua, in the West Indies (1949). When she was 16 years old, she left home for New York and became a writer for The New Yorker magazine. She's the author of short stories, the novels Annie John (1985) and Lucy (1990), and most recently a collection entitled Talk Stories (2001).

It's the birthday of poet and short story writer Raymond Carver, born in Clatskanie, Oregon (1938), the child of a sawmill worker and a waitress. Within a year of leaving high school, he married and had children. He had some success as a writer in the late 60s: his story "Will you Please Be Quiet, Please?" was selected for the Best American Short Stories anthology in 1967. It was the same year he began drinking heavily, torn between the demands of writing and family. He was in and out of detox programs before he finally quit drinking, through AA, in 1982. He's the author of many collections of stories, including What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (1981), Cathedral (1983), and Where I'm Calling From (1988). His poetry collections include Where Water Comes Together with Other Water (1985) and Ultramarine (1987).

It's the birthday of suspense novelist Robert Ludlum, born in New York City (1927). His first book, The Scarlatti Inheritance (1971), was a huge best seller.

It's the birthday of poet Theodore Roethke, born in Saginaw, Michigan (1908). His father and his uncle both were in the flower business and owned extensive greenhouses. He was manic-depressive in the days before reliable medication had been developed; as he aged, his breakdowns became more frequent. Still, he managed to do a great deal of good work. His fourth collection, The Waking, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1953; Words for the Wind (1957) and The Far Field (1964) both won the National Book Award.

It's the birthday of essayist and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson, born in Boston (1803), descended from a long line of New England clergymen. He, too, after graduating from Harvard, went to divinity school and became a minister in Boston. He only lasted at his post for three years; he resigned because of his religious doubts and because he disliked the idea of teaching religious orthodoxy. He sailed to England, where he met Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Carlyle. On his return to America, he moved to Concord, Massachusetts, and took up a literary career.

Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.®

 

«

»

  • “Writers end up writing stories—or rather, stories' shadows—and they're grateful if they can, but it is not enough. Nothing the writer can do is ever enough” —Joy Williams
  • “I want to live other lives. I've never quite believed that one chance is all I get. Writing is my way of making other chances.” —Anne Tyler
  • “Writing is a performance, like singing an aria or dancing a jig” —Stephen Greenblatt
  • “All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.” —F. Scott Fitzgerald
  • “Good writing is always about things that are important to you, things that are scary to you, things that eat you up.” —John Edgar Wideman
  • “In certain ways writing is a form of prayer.” —Denise Levertov
  • “Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.” —E.L. Doctorow
  • “Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” —E.L. Doctorow
  • “Let's face it, writing is hell.” —William Styron
  • “A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.” —Thomas Mann
  • “Writing is 90 percent procrastination: reading magazines, eating cereal out of the box, watching infomercials.” —Paul Rudnick
  • “Writing is a failure. Writing is not only useless, it's spoiled paper.” —Padget Powell
  • “Writing is very hard work and knowing what you're doing the whole time.” —Shelby Foote
  • “I think all writing is a disease. You can't stop it.” —William Carlos Williams
  • “Writing is like getting married. One should never commit oneself until one is amazed at one's luck.” —Iris Murdoch
  • “The less conscious one is of being ‘a writer,’ the better the writing.” —Pico Iyer
  • “Writing is…that oddest of anomalies: an intimate letter to a stranger.” —Pico Iyer
  • “Writing is my dharma.” —Raja Rao
  • “Writing is a combination of intangible creative fantasy and appallingly hard work.” —Anthony Powell
  • “I think writing is, by definition, an optimistic act.” —Michael Cunningham
Current Faves - Learn more about poets featured frequently on the show