Most False Poem EVER....

[BlooInBloo]

Requiem

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

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/29/opinion/29updike.html


RIP, sir - you're remembered.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. You got that right!

I saw that in the fiction books reviews the other day, and I thought exactly the same thing...

It's a lovely bit of work, still...

He was so damn eloquent!

:hi:

[smoogatz]

2. Great fiction writer.

Pretty mediocre poet. Unplumbable? Oy.

[LBJDemocrat]

3. I think he's a very good poet

Perfectly structured, no pretentious line-filling.

[BlooInBloo]

7. Poetry is one of my many blind spots...

But the one in the OP seemed to function perfectly well at passing along the author's sense of futility and/or self-deprecating humility.

It might be considered somewhat "basic" in that regard, being rather representationalist, rather than something more abstract, but I'm a place-for-everything-and-everything-in-its-place kind of guy anyway.

[smoogatz]

8. Nah. It's lame.

The tetrameter's too metronomic; the two slight variations feel more like wordplay-driven stumbles than intentional substitutions. Also it's kind of self-pitying, I think, and never really veers from its initiating subject. I've always loved his fiction, and always thought his poetry was crap. But whatever. Just heard a couple of interviews with him on Fresh Air, too, which really made me like him as a person.

[LBJDemocrat]

9. Give me an example of a really good poem then.

I'm curious.

[smoogatz]

10. Metered or free verse?

[LBJDemocrat]

11. Metered

But also a free verse one if you can.

[EFerrari]

4. Bloo -- there are at least two different Updike videos available for streaming

on the BookTv homepage this weekend in the section "Featured videos". booktv.org. :hi:

[patrice]

5. There are no absolutes.

Whatever that means.

:shrug:

[Tangerine LaBamba]

6. I met him once,

and it was a charming experience.

But I never could get into his fiction. His essays were better, but his fiction just eluded me.

A nice man, though. A very, very nice man who was kind to a just-about-to-be-published author.