Better known for his short stories, Raymond Carver was also an accomplished poet, as this superbly presented collection attests
- Anthony Quinn, Harpers & Queen
The cumulative effect is exhilarating: <i>happiness</i>, yes, but about as far as you can get from the bland, cosmic gruntlement currently being peddled by so many American poets
Times Literary Supplement
A year after the American writer's abrupt death, Salman Rushdie concluded a review of <i>A New Path to the Waterfall</i>, a final verse collection, by urging: 'Read everything Raymond Carver ever wrote.' It's very good advice
Irish Times
What is never lost - or lost sight of- is the primacy of experience and the most direct way of finding its expression... The urgency of the artist not to trivialise, but to find the essence; plain language in which to lay bare the terror and beauty of plain lives
- John Harvey,