Calgary Public Library

Collected poems, 1953-1993, John Updike

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poetry

Collected poems, 1953-1993

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John Updike

"The idea of verse, of poetry, has always, during forty years spent working primarily in prose, stood at my elbow, as a standing invitation to the highest kind of verbal exercise - the most satisfying, the most archaic, the most elusive of critical control. In hotel rooms and airplanes, on beaches and Sundays, at junctures of personal happiness or its opposite, poetry has comforted me with its hope of permanence, its packaging of flux." Thus John Updike writes in introducing his Collected Poems. The earliest poems here date from 1953, when Updike was twenty-one, and the last were written after he turned sixty. Over seventy have not been published before in book form. Most all of those published in his five previous collections are included, with some revisions. Arranged in chronological order, the poems constitute, as he says, "the thready backside of my life's fading tapestry." An ample set of notes at the back of the book discusses some of the hidden threads, and expatiates upon a number of fine points. Nature - tenderly intricate, ruthlessly impervious - is a constant and ambiguous presence in these poems, along with the social observation one would expect in a novelist. No occasion is too modest or too daily to excite metaphysical wonder, or to provoke a lyrical ingenuity of language. Yet even the wittiest of the poems are rooted to the ground of experience and fact. "Seven Odes to Seven Natural Processes" attempt to explicate the physical world with a directness seldom attempted in poetry. Several longer poems - "Leaving Church Early," "Mid-point"--Use autobiography to proclaim the basic strangeness of existence. Updike's light verse, relegated to a separate section, was his youthful forte, and led David McCord to write of him as "a graceful border-crosser (light verse to poem) as Auden has been." Indeed, even the lightest verses within their giddy wordplay echo his recurring notes of confession, nostalgia, anxiety, and awe

Why the telephone wires dip and the poles are cracked and crooked -- Cloud shdows -- Ex-basketball player -- A modest mound of bones -- Sunflower -- March: a birthday poem -- Burning trash -- English train compartment -- Tao in the Yankee Stadium bleachers -- How to be Uncle Sam -- 3 A.M. -- Mobile of birds -- Shillington -- Suburban madrigal -- Telephone poles -- Mosquito -- Trees eat sunshine -- Winter ocean -- Modigliani's death mask -- Seagulls -- Seven stanzas at Easter -- B.W.I. -- February 22 -- Summer: West Side -- Wash -- Maples in a spruce forest -- Vermont -- The solitary pond -- Flirt -- Fever -- Earthworm -- Old-fashioned lightning rod -- Sunshine on sandstone -- The stunt flier -- Calendar -- The short days -- Boil -- Widener Library, Reading Room -- Movie house -- Vibration -- The blessing -- My children at the dump -- The great scarf of birds -- Azores -- Erotic epigrams -- Hoeing -- Report of health -- Fireworks -- Lamplight -- Nuda Natens -- Postcards from Soviet Cities -- MoscowLeningrad -- Kiev -- Tbilisi -- Yerevan -- Camera -- Roman portrait busts -- Fellatio -- Decor -- Poem for a far land -- Late January -- Dog's death -- Home movies -- Antigua -- Amoeba -- Elm -- Daughter -- Eurydice -- Seal in nature -- Air show -- Omega -- The angels -- Bath after sailing -- Topsfield fair -- Pompeii -- Sand dollar -- Washington -- Dream objects -- Midpoint -- The photographs -- The dance of the solids -- The play of memory -- Chloe's poem -- Minority report -- Living with a wife -- At the piano -- In the tub -- Under the sunlamp -- During menstruation -- All the while -- A l'Ecole Berlitz -- South of the Alps -- A bicycle chain -- Tossing and turning -- On an island -- Sunday rain -- Marching through a novel -- Night flight, over ocean -- Phenomena -- Wind -- Sunday -- Touch of spring -- The house growing -- Cunts -- Apologies to Harvard -- Commencement, Pingree School -- Conversation -- Melting -- Query -- Heading for Nandi -- Sleepless in Scarsdale -- Note to the previous tenantsPale bliss -- Mime -- Golfers -- Poisoned in Nassau -- You who swim -- Sunday in Boston -- Raining in Magens Bay -- Leaving church early -- Another dog's death -- Dream and reality -- Dutch cleanser -- Rats -- The melancholy of storm windows -- Calder's hands -- The grief of cafeterias -- Spanish sonnets -- To Ed Sissman -- Ohio -- Iowa -- Waiting rooms -- Boston Lying-in -- Mass. mental health -- On the way to delphi -- An oddly lovely day alone -- Taste -- Penumbrae -- Revelation -- The shuttle -- Crab crack -- Nature -- The moons of Jupiter -- Upon the last day of his forty-ninth year -- Planting trees -- The fleckings -- East Hampton-Boston by air -- Small-city people -- L.A. -- Plow cemetery -- Spring song -- Accumulation -- Styles of bloom -- Natural question -- Two hoppers -- Two sonnets whose titles came to me simultaneously -- The dying phobiac takes his fears with him -- No more access to her underpants -- Long shadow -- Aerie -- The code -- Island sun -- Pain -- Sleeping with youRichmond -- Gradations of black -- The furniture -- Seven odes to seven natural processes -- Ode to rot -- To evaporation -- Ode to growth -- To fragmentation -- Ode to entropy -- To crystallization -- Ode to healing -- Switzerland -- Munich -- A pear like a potato -- Airport -- From above -- Oxford, thirty years after -- Somewhere -- Sonnet to man-made grandeur -- Klimt and Schiele confront the cunt -- Returning native -- Snowdrops 1987 -- Goodbye, Goteborg -- Hot water -- Squirrels mating -- Sails on All Saints' Day -- Tulsa -- Washington: tourist view -- Back Bay -- In memoriam Felis Felis -- Enemies of a house -- Orthodontia -- Condo moon -- Pillow -- Seattle uplift -- The beautiful bowel movement -- Charleston -- Frost -- To a box turtle -- Each summer's swallows -- Fargo -- Fall -- The millipede -- Generic college -- Perfection wasted -- Working outdoors in winter -- Indianapolis -- Zoo bats -- Landing in the rain at La Guardia -- Mouse sex -- Granite -- Relatives -- Thin air -- NovemberLight switches -- Miami -- Fly -- Flurry -- Bindweed -- July -- To a dead flame -- Back from vacation -- Literary Dublin -- Elderly sex -- Celery -- Sao Paulo -- Rio de Janeiro -- Brazil -- Upon looking into Sylvia Plath's Letters Home -- At the end of the rainbow -- Academy -- Mountain impasse -- solitaire -- Duet, with muffled brake drums -- Player piano --Snapshots -- An imaginable conference -- Dilemma in the delta -- Shipbored -- Song of the open fireplace -- The clan -- Youth's progress -- Humanities course -- V.B. Nimble, V.B. Quick -- Lament, for cocoa -- Pop smash, out of echo chamber -- Sunglasses -- Pooem -- To an usherette -- Time's fool -- Superman -- An ode -- The newlyweds -- The story of my life -- A bitter life -- A wooden darning egg -- Publius Vergilius Maro, the Madison Avenue Hick -- Tsokadze O Altitudo -- The one-year-old -- Room 28 -- Philological -- Mr. High-mind -- Tax-free encounter -- Scenic -- Capacity -- Little poems -- Poplar revivals 1956 -- Tune, in American typeDue respect -- A rack of paperbacks -- Even egrets err -- Glasses -- The sensualist -- In memoriam -- Planting a mailbox -- ZULUS LIVE IN LAND WITHOUT A SQUARE -- Caligula's dream -- Bendix -- The menagerie at Versailles in 1775 -- Reel -- Kenneths -- Upon learning that a bird exists called the turnstone -- In extremis -- Blked --Toothache man -- Party knee -- The moderate -- Deities and beasts -- Within a Quad -- In praise of (C10H9O5)x -- Milady reflects -- The fritillary-- Thoughts while driving home -- Sonic boom -- Tome-thoughts, from the TIMES -- A song of paternal care -- Tropical beetles -- Agatha Christie and Beatrix Potter -- Young matrons dancing -- Comp. religion -- Meditation on a news item -- Cosmic gall -- A vision -- Les Saints nouveaux -- The descent of Mr. Aldez -- Upon learning that town exists in Virginia called Upperville -- Recital -- I missed his book, but I read his name -- On the inclusion of miniature dinosaurs in breakfast cereal boxes -- The high-hearts -- Marriage counselThe handkerchiefs of Khaibar Khan -- Dea ex machina -- Die neuen Heiligen -- Miss Moore at assembly -- White dwarf -- Exposure -- Expose -- Farewell to the shopping district of Antibes -- Some Frenchmen -- Sea knell -- Vow -- The Amish -- The naked ape -- The origin of laughter -- The average Egyptian faces death -- Painted wives -- Skyey developments -- Courtesy call -- Business acquaintances -- Seven new ways of looking at the moon -- Upon shaving off one's beard -- The cars in Caracas -- Insomnia the gem of the ocean -- To a waterbed -- The jolly greene giant -- News from the underworld -- Author's residences -- Sin City, D.C. -- Shaving mirror -- Self-service -- The visions of Mackenzie King -- Energy: a villanelle -- On the recently minted hundred-cent piece -- Typical optical -- The Rockettes -- Food -- The sometime sportsman greets the spring -- ZIP code ode -- Deja, indeed -- Two limericks for the elderly -- Mites -- An open letter to Vogager II -- Clasical optical -- Neoteny