Re: John Updike died today


"Naomi" <darvell349@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
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On Jan 29, 8:31?pm, "Annie C" <chern...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"Wes Struebing" <str...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message

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| On Thu, 29 Jan 2009 12:27:36 -0600, "Bev Vincent"|
<MaxDev...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

|
| >It came to me the other day:
| >Were I to die, no one would say,
| >"Oh, what a shame! So young, so full
| >Of promise - depths unplumbable!"
| >
| >Instead, a shrug and tearless eyes
| >Will greet my overdue demise;
| >The wide response will be, I know,
| >"I thought he died a while ago."
| >
| >For life's a shabby subterfuge,
| >And death is real, and dark, and huge.
| >The shock of it will register
| >Nowhere but where it will occur.
| >
| >- JOHN UPDIKE
| >
| >This poem is taken from John Updike's forthcoming collection, "Endpoint
and
| >Other Poems."
| >
| Guess he was wrong, wasn't he, Bev? ?He WILL be missed!

But the tragedy is, he himself may not have believed that he'd be missed
or
remembered.
He must have been in a very dark place when he penned the above words..
Made me sad..

Annie


This poem is kind of paradoxical, to me. The first part has a light
humorous tone (I think). I read it as being all about the kinds of
things people say when someone dies. It made me laugh, if ruefully.
In the last stanza, I think he is perfectly serious. He has always had
a preoccupation with mortality in his novels and can get pretty dark.
Somehow, though, I just doubt whether he was really in a bad place
when he wrote this. In another poem he wrote about the power of
literature (I think) to "Comfort with terror our mortal afternoons." I
always got the feeling that the anticipation of death that runs
through his work is part of what makes life (as lived by his
characters) so enjoyable.
________________________________________________
I find your comments very illuminating, Naomi. Don't laugh, I mean it.. I
sensed a thread of irony running through the poem, but, then too, I was in a
rather dark mood myself when I read it. (having just received some
distressing news. ) But upon rereading the lines again today (and in a
brighter frame of mind), aha -I see what you are saying.

It's been years since I've picked up one of his novels, and I think we have
many here. I need to do that. I've been missing a lot, I suspect. When I
first read him years ago, when much younger, well, couldn't get into them at
all - never finished one - and did not relate at all to his stories or
characters. Could be that now, perhaps I will relate.
Thanks so much for your insights..
Cheers,


Annie


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