First Installment Report

Final Report Installment: Happy Poems

Happiness by Raymond Carver

       Raymond Carver was born on May 25, 1938 in Clatskanie Oregon, a small town on Colombia River. He Grew up in an average working-class family and spent a large portion of his life moving around.   He married pregnant 16 year-old Maryanne Buck when he was just 18. As he juggled working various jobs, raising children, and writing, he eventually started drinking. He was hospitalized several times for severe drinking and his marriage began to collapse. He eventually died on August 2 1988.

        Carver establishes the theme of happiness being real and tangible in his poem by using established syntax, symbols, abstract and concrete terms. In the first stanza of the poem, Carver tries to explain that happiness is not meant to be treated too glorious and so magnificent, something unattainable, which is what a lot of people think it is. He also tries to make a point that happiness is not fixed. It doesn’t just occur at the same time every day of the year. It can be experienced anytime and any day. Basically, the poet believes that happiness is real and tangible.

         Carver’s background can be connected to this poem because he grew up in a working family and started working various blue collar jobs at a very young age. Similarly, the main character in the poem is also a young newspaper delivery boy, working hard for little pay. He boy sees how happiness can be achieved through companionship and that happiness can happen to commoners as well as working-class. It can be experienced by young as well as old. 

Happiness by Raymond Carver

So early it's still almost dark out.
I'm near the window with coffee,
and the usual early morning stuff
that passes for thought.
When I see the boy and his friend
walking up the road
to deliver the newspaper.
They wear caps and sweaters,
and one boy has a bag over his shoulder.
They are so happy
they aren't saying anything, these boys.
I think if they could, they would take
each other's arm.
It's early in the morning,
and they are doing this thing together.
They come on, slowly.
The sky is taking on light,
though the moon still hangs pale over the water.
Such beauty that for a minute
death and ambition, even love,
doesn't enter into this.
Happiness. It comes on
unexpectedly. And goes beyond, really,
any early morning talk about it.