Updike, John (Vol. 3) - Updike, John 1932–
Updike, John 1932–
An American novelist, short story writer, poet, and writer for children, Updike is a major literary talent. He is a flamboyant and sometimes exasperating stylist, dealing in his novels with permanence and loss, love, death, and God. (See also Contemporary Authors, Vols. 1-4, rev. ed.)
The sensibility behind John Updike's poems in Midpoint is seldom able to take itself seriously. Its vision is comic, its laughter and irony directed at itself. Poem after poem begins in humorous bitterness and reaches toward reconciliation, if only the reconciliation of a well-turned phrase that manages to settle a matter for a moment. There are many fine, memorable poems here (Dog's Death, Dream Objects, The Angels, My Children at the Dump, Fellatio), but the achievement of the long title sequence is dubious. Midpoint is a collage…. Many sections of Midpoint are technically impressive. Verse forms are handled...
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