BELOVED

"And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth."

Raymond Clevie Carver
May 25, 1938 - August 2, 1988
from: "A New Path to the Waterfall" (1989)

Carver was called "the best American short-story writer since Hemingway."

"I can't think of anything else I'd rather be called than a writer," he said, "unless it's a poet. Short-story writer, poet, occasional essayist." ... Raymond Carver (husband of poet Tess Gallagher)