John Updike is one of America’s most famous writers of serious literature. And the literature he produced spans the full gamut of form and genre. He wrote novels, short stories, essays, criticism, and, yes, poetry. There is almost no major award for literature that Updike did not either win or at least be nominated for over the course of his long career. And yet, when one thinks of the truly vast output of his career, there are probably few for whom his poetry immediately comes to mind.
This is certainly due in large part to the fact that he was such a towering figure writing other types of literature. Updike is considered one of the true American masters of the short story and is equally highly regarded as a novelist. As a result, his poetry has never received quite the same attention. This oversight is certainly not due to a lack of productivity. Updike published a staggering eight collections of his verse between 1958 and the posthumous appearance of his final volume in 2009. Part of the lack of attention given to Updike’s poetry in comparison to tremendous volumes of scholarship devoted to his prose may be no more complicated than the content. Updike is one of those poets who writes poems for people who don’t like poetry. Rather than complicated and abstruse symbolism-laden works that don’t seem to be about anything particular to the average person, his subjects were a reflection of what he was also writing about in his novels and short stories.
Just a very brief overview of some of the titles of his poems gives an indication of why he never quite became a darling of the poetry set: “Ex-Basketball Player,” “There was an Old Poop from Poughkeepsie,” “Burning Trash,” and “Colonoscopy.” It is an escapable truth that Updike wrote poetry for people who just want to be entertained rather than for scholars and academics who don’t want what the poem is really about to be right there in the title itself.
