ULTRAMARINE

Mr. Carver is heir to that most appealing American poetic voice, the lyricism of Theodore Roethke and James Wright.... this book is a treasure, one to return to. No one's brevity is as rich, as complete, as Raymond Carver's.
Carver's gifts as a storyteller shine through his poetry.... Sometimes a Carver poem also works as a short story, with all its elements character, diction, place, event compressed intact into the brevity of verse. And sometimes Carver delivers the goods in pure lyrical form, in words as full of yearning and sensibility as those of a very young man, but poems possessing the hard-won qualities of focus, stillness and irony only rewarded by experience.