Endpoint and Other Poems
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- £4.99
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- £4.99
Publisher Description
Endpoint opens with a series of connected poems which were written on the occasions of Updike's recent birthdays and culminate in his confrontation with his final illness. They look back on the boy that Updike once was, on his family and little town and the circumstances that fed his love of writing. Then there are 'Other Poems', ranging from fanciful musings about what it would be like to be a stolen Rembrandt painting to celebratory outpourings that capture the spontaneity and flux of life. Finally, there is a set of sonnets, some of which are inspired by exotic travels in distant lands, and some of which simply take pleasure in the idiosyncrasies of nature in Updike's own backyard.
For John Updike, the writing of poetry was always a special joy, and this final collection is an eloquent and moving testament to the life of this extraordinary writer.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Many delights but very few surprises await Updike's admirers in this last book of poems from the prolific essayist and novelist, completed only weeks before his death. Much of it gathers calm, casual, loosely rhymed sonnets, first in autobiographical sequences, describing the first and the last years of the poet's life: Age I must, but die I would rather not... Be with me, words, a little longer. These sequences sketch Arizona and New England; single sonnets, placed later in the collection, offer impressions of Russia, India, the Irish seashore ( like loads of eternal laundry,/ onrolling breaks cresting into foam ) and of nearer phenomena, such as the noise made by men fixing Updike's house. Quiet poems pay tribute to golf and golfers, to Eros in old age and to America, where beneath/ the good cheer and sly jazz the chance/ of failure is everybody's right,/ beginning with baseball. Elegant samples of Updike's celebrated light verse are also in evidence. Mostly, though, these are serious, quiet, low-pressure, frequently elegiac poems, concerned with later life " old doo-wop stars, for example, gray hairdos still conked,/ their up-from-the-choir baby faces lined/ with wrinkles now.
