Piece Description

Raymond Carver is most famous for his short stories yet the detail in each story is even more condensed when Carver writes in verse. Carver's widow, Tess Gallagher reads "Projectiles", a poem written for Japanese contemporary writer Haruki Murakami. Carver married poet Tess Gallagher shortly before his death in 1988. "Projectiles" was written in the late '80s, after Carver's Japanese translator Haruki Murakami visited Carver and Gallagher is their Port Angeles home.

Haruki Murakami, a writer now known for his novels The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and Kafka On the Shore, had yet to come to prominence in the States. The meeting between the Carvers and the Murakamis went so well that Haruki and wife Yoko had an extra-large bed installed in their Tokyo apartment for Carver. But Carver never made it to Japan. He died of cancer in 1988. In this reading.