Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Sissman, L(ouis) E(dward) (Vol. 18) - John Updike

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JOHN UPDIKE

"Hello, Darkness" contains the three volumes of verse Sissman published in 1968, 1969 and 1971, plus 39 poems never before collected. Of these, some are light verse and casual metrical jokes scribbled to friends; but most are in the usual Sissmanesque mode—moments remembered or envisioned with a fascinating specificity, set forth in a dense but dancing blank verse varied by spurts of rhyme, liberally besprinkled with epigraphs and dedications, and frequently arranged in suites of linked episode. Or arranged, perhaps, like snapshots on the pages of an album; among the many petty modern skills that engaged Sissman's intelligence was that of photography, and a hardedged, highlighted, deceptively factual quality balances the elegiac tone of his running, randomly accruing verse autobiography. Elegy deepened, as his long-foreseen death neared, to anguish. His last poems, written before the muse deserted him in 1974 as abruptly as she had descended in 1963,...

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1. Introduction
2. John Updike
3. William H. Pritchard
4. Alan Williamson
5. Joel Oppenheimer
6. Alfred Corn
7. Copyright

1. John Updike