ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how Raymond Carver uses images of water, fish, and fishing as self-referential structuring devices that can be seen at macro and micro levels of organization, outside and inside poems. It focuses on the self-referential in Carvers oeuvre thus ultimately about how a poet harnesses memory and creativity for poetic production. A fruitful way of approaching these topics is by considering areas of overlap between neuroscience and the humanities. The chapter also focuses on all collaborations with the publisher William B. Ewert that exemplify his continued preoccupation with the motifs of water and fish. In 1985 Carver published a slim special edition poetry pamphlet with the title This Water. This Water contains the eight poems The Trestle, Harleys Swans, Woolworths 1954, Wenas Ridge, Our First House in Sacramento, My Dads Wallet, Where Water Comes Together With Other Water, and A Haircut.
