Title: Americana : and other poems /
Authors: Updike, John; Updike, John,; Woodberry Poetry Room (Harvard College Library).
Publisher: A.A. Knopf,
Year: 2001
Subjects: American poetry
Abstract: John Updike's first collection of verse since his Collected Poems 1953-1993 brings together fifty-eight poems, three of them of considerable length. Their four sections take up, in order: America, its cities and airplanes; the poet's life, his childhood, birthdays, and ailments; foreign travel, to Europe and the tropics; and, beginning with the long Song of Myself, daily life, its furniture and consolations. There is little of the light verse with which Mr. Updike began his writing career nearly fifty years ago, but a light touch can be felt, in his nimble manipulation of the ghosts of metric order, in his caressing of the living textures of things, and in his reluctance to wave goodbye to it all.
Contents: Americana -- Island cities -- Phoenix -- Atlanta-Dallas/Fort Worth, 11:10 P.M. -- On the road -- Bad night in New York state -- The overhead rack -- Icarus -- Corpus Christi -- New Orleans -- Corinth, MS -- Reading, PA -- Near Clifton, perhaps -- New York City -- Flight to limbo -- Before the mirror -- The hedge -- In the cemetery high above Shillington -- 61 and some -- Vero Beach birthday -- Upon becoming a senior citizen -- A wound posthumously inflicted -- On the nearly simultaneous deaths of Harold Brodkey and Joseph Brodsky -- One tough keratosis -- Ocular hypertension -- To two of my characters -- Reality -- Downtime.