Poetry News 

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030   James, Clive.  "Final Act."  Review of Endpoint and Other Poems by John Updike in The New York Times Book Review.  May 5, 2009, p. 15.

John Updike was always careful not to make high claims for himself as a poet.  His true success as a writer was in the novel, where according to Clive James, he rivaled Saul Bellow and Philip Roth and eclipsed Norman Mailer, Gore Vidal, and J. D. Salinger.  But in this last collection of his poems, he proves "he always had what it took."  Even in his light verse, he was "dauntingly accomplished," and in a few of his serious poems, such as "Bird Caught in My Deer Netting," he was wonderful.  They match his superb Rabbit and Bech novels "in the imagery, the observation, the rhythm, the delight in making words click into their ideal working order."  These poems are characterized by loose forms, "unrhymed, held together by the beat of iambic pentameter."  In some of his poetry he matched his ability as a novelist in reporting America, that is, in giving an event an historical dimension.  We sense on these occasions, Updike tried "to give it everything he had."

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