Download high-resolution image

Selected Poems of John Updike

Introduction by Brad Leithauser

Edited by John Updike, Christopher Carduff

Paperback

$19.95 US

Knopf

7"W x 9.12"H x 0.91"D (17.8 x 23.2 x 2.3 cm) | 20 oz (561 g) | 16 per carton

On sale Oct 23, 2018 | 320 Pages | 9781101875308

Sales rights: US, Canada, Open Mkt

Add to cart Add to list Exam Copies

See Additional Formats

View on Edelweiss

The best from Updike’s lifework in poetry: 129 witty and intimate poems that, when read together take on the quality of an autobiography in verse. • By a master of American letters and the author of the acclaimed Rabbit series.

“Updike’s gift for close observation, in these poems as elsewhere, is near to supernatural.” —The New York Times

Five decades of witty, intimate, and moving poems—written between 1953 and 2008—with the cumulative force of an unfolding verse-diary.

Though John Updike is widely known as one of America’s greatest writers of prose, both his first book and his last were poetry collections, and in the fifty years between he published six other volumes of verse. Now, six years after his death, Christopher Carduff has selected the best from Updike’s lifework in poetry: 129 witty and intimate poems that, when read together in the order of their composition, take on the quality of an unfolding verse-diary.

Among these poems are precocious undergraduate efforts (including the previously unpublished “Coming into New York”), frequently anthologized midcareer classics (“Seagulls,” “Seven Stanzas at Easter,” “Dog’s Death”), and dozens of later works in a form that Updike made his own, the blank-verse sonnet. The poems range from metaphysical epigrams and devotional poems to lyrical odes to rot, growth, and healing; from meditations on Roman portrait busts and the fleshy canvases of Lucian Freud to observations on sash cords, postage stamps, and hand tools; from several brief episodes in family history to a pair of long autobiographical poems, the antic and eclectic “Midpoint,” written at age thirty-five, and the elegiac masterpiece “Endpoint,” completed just before his death at seventy-six. The variety of the work is astonishing, the craftsmanship always of the highest caliber.

Art, science, popular culture, foreign travel, erotic love, the beauty of the man-made and the God-given worlds—these recurring topics provided Updike ever-surprising occasions for wonder and matchless verbal invention. His Selected Poems is, as Brad Leithauser writes in his introduction, a celebration of American life in the second half of the twentieth century: “No other writer of his time captured so much of this passing pageant. And that he did so with brio and delight and nimbleness is another reason to celebrate our noble celebrant.”

“Updike’s gift for close observation, in these poems as elsewhere, is near to supernatural.” —The New York Times

"Selected Poems strikes me as a book that anybody who loves Updike, or poetry, or Cape Ann—or, for that matter, golf or sex—should read. That should cover more or less everybody.” —Dan Chiasson, The New Yorker

Available for sale exclusive:

• Canada

• Guam

• Minor Outl.Ins.

• North Mariana

• Philippines

• Puerto Rico

• Samoa,American

• US Virgin Is.

• USA

Available for sale non-exclusive:

• Afghanistan

• Aland Islands

• Albania

• Algeria

• Andorra

• Angola

• Anguilla

• Antarctica

• Argentina

• Armenia

• Aruba

• Austria

• Azerbaijan

• Bahrain

• Belarus

• Belgium

• Benin

• Bhutan

• Bolivia

• Bonaire, Saba

• Bosnia Herzeg.

• Bouvet Island

• Brazil

• Bulgaria

• Burkina Faso

• Burundi

• Cambodia

• Cameroon

• Cape Verde

• Centr.Afr.Rep.

• Chad

• Chile

• China

• Colombia

• Comoro Is.

• Congo

• Cook Islands

• Costa Rica

• Croatia

• Cuba

• Curacao

• Czech Republic

• Dem. Rep. Congo

• Denmark

• Djibouti

• Dominican Rep.

• Ecuador

• Egypt

• El Salvador

• Equatorial Gui.

• Eritrea

• Estonia

• Ethiopia

• Faroe Islands

• Finland

• France

• Fren.Polynesia

• French Guinea

• Gabon

• Georgia

• Germany

• Greece

• Greenland

• Guadeloupe

• Guatemala

• Guinea Republic

• Guinea-Bissau

• Haiti

• Heard/McDon.Isl

• Honduras

• Hong Kong

• Hungary

• Iceland

• Indonesia

• Iran

• Iraq

• Israel

• Italy

• Ivory Coast

• Japan

• Jordan

• Kazakhstan

• Kuwait

• Kyrgyzstan

• Laos

• Latvia

• Lebanon

• Liberia

• Libya

• Liechtenstein

• Lithuania

• Luxembourg

• Macau

• Macedonia

• Madagascar

• Maldives

• Mali

• Marshall island

• Martinique

• Mauritania

• Mayotte

• Mexico

• Micronesia

• Moldavia

• Monaco

• Mongolia

• Montenegro

• Morocco

• Myanmar

• Nepal

• Netherlands

• New Caledonia

• Nicaragua

• Niger

• Niue

• Norfolk Island

• North Korea

• Norway

• Oman

• Palau

• Palestinian Ter

• Panama

• Paraguay

• Peru

• Poland

• Portugal

• Qatar

• Reunion Island

• Romania

• Russian Fed.

• Rwanda

• Saint Martin

• San Marino

• SaoTome Princip

• Saudi Arabia

• Senegal

• Serbia

• Singapore

• Sint Maarten

• Slovakia

• Slovenia

• South Korea

• South Sudan

• Spain

• St Barthelemy

• St.Pier,Miquel.

• Sth Terr. Franc

• Sudan

• Suriname

• Svalbard

• Sweden

• Switzerland

• Syria

• Tadschikistan

• Taiwan

• Thailand

• Timor-Leste

• Togo

• Tokelau Islands

• Tunisia

• Turkey

• Turkmenistan

• Ukraine

• Unit.Arab Emir.

• Uruguay

• Uzbekistan

• Vatican City

• Venezuela

• Vietnam

• Wallis,Futuna

• West Saharan

• Western Samoa

• Yemen

Not available for sale:

• Antigua/Barbuda

• Australia

• Bahamas

• Bangladesh

• Barbados

• Belize

• Bermuda

• Botswana

• Brit.Ind.Oc.Ter

• Brit.Virgin Is.

• Brunei

• Cayman Islands

• Christmas Islnd

• Cocos Islands

• Cyprus

• Dominica

• Falkland Islnds

• Fiji

• Gambia

• Ghana

• Gibraltar

• Grenada

• Guernsey

• Guyana

• India

• Ireland

• Isle of Man

• Jamaica

• Jersey

• Kenya

• Kiribati

• Lesotho

• Malawi

• Malaysia

• Malta

• Mauritius

• Montserrat

• Mozambique

• Namibia

• Nauru

• New Zealand

• Nigeria

• Pakistan

• PapuaNewGuinea

• Pitcairn Islnds

• S. Sandwich Ins

• Seychelles

• Sierra Leone

• Solomon Islands

• Somalia

• South Africa

• Sri Lanka

• St. Helena

• St. Lucia

• St. Vincent

• St.Chr.,Nevis

• Swaziland

• Tanzania

• Tonga

• Trinidad,Tobago

• Turks&Caicos Is

• Tuvalu

• Uganda

• United Kingdom

• Vanuatu

• Zambia

• Zimbabwe

About

Praise

Rights