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TESS GALLAGHER1: Silence then. And while we were in the middle of it, wind rushed like a hand over the chimes above the stone. I thought, he's here. And so did everyone else. We even spoke about it afterwards.

Let ourselves know that's how he came to be with us through a moment as its own speaking. Yes, I'm saying hello. I'm getting ready to tell them a few things, and to ask them some things, and to just write some poems to them.

SPEAKER 2: And who are these ghosts?

TESS GALLAGHER1: The ghosts are really the spirits of the loved ones who accompany all of us. But I'm talking through my particular ones. And Raymond Carver was my late husband, and he's one of the important ghosts in my life.

My father, who was a spar tree rigger in the Northwest. He's spoken too. My mother, who was a choker setter, she's in there. And my uncle is there in a poem called Apparition. That's for a start, anyway, a few of the ghosts in there.

SPEAKER 2: Your poem choices caught my attention. So could you read that and tell us about the person to whom it is dedicated?

TESS GALLAGHER1: Yes, it's dedicated to Drago Stambuk, who is a Croatian poet, and had been a friend of mine for many years. And he was living in Cairo at the time that I gave him this poem as a birthday present. Choices.

I go to the mountain side

of the house to cut saplings,

and clear a view to snow

on the mountain. But when I look up,

Saw in hand, I see a nest clutched in

the uppermost branches.

I don't cut that one.

I don't cut the others either.

Suddenly, in every tree,

An unseen nest

Where a mountain would be.

SPEAKER 2: I also noticed in the acknowledgments and the beginning of the book that, that poem choices will appear on coffee mugs at Starbucks.

TESS GALLAGHER1: It was supposed to. I have yet to receive my coffee mug. But at the time it was written, that's what I was told.

SPEAKER 2: Are you happy to send one of your poems out into the world that way, perhaps on the side of a coffee cup?

TESS GALLAGHER1: I wouldn't mind it at all. I hope someone at Starbucks hears this. If the Starbucks people are listening, please send me my coffee cup.

SPEAKER 2: And that brings me to your late husband, Raymond Carver, who's the subject of or dedicatee of a couple of your poems. He died in 1988. And I'm wondering, when it comes to the craft of writing, when it comes to actually putting the words on paper, what do you take from him all these years later?

TESS GALLAGHER1: Well, he loved a clarity. And I think that to living with him and writing with him brought that clarity forward. But I think I've regressed a little since he passed away. And that mystery has come in and given me more watercolor poems, so that the complexity has again come back. And a certain kind of play is there in the poems that maybe wasn't while he was alive.

SPEAKER 2: And if he were still here, what do you think he'd make of this collection?

TESS GALLAGHER1: Oh, I think he'd say, hey, babe, that's a keeper.

[LAUGHTER]

SPEAKER 2: Tess Gallagher, I can't thank you enough for coming in.

TESS GALLAGHER1: Thank you, Tom. Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER 2: Tess Gallagher's new poetry collection is called Dear Ghosts, and is published by Graywolf Press. She'll read from her new book tomorrow night at 7:00 at the New Minneapolis Central Public Library.