I'm always confusing John Updike and John Irving; I've read far more of the latter than the former. I've not (yet) read much of Updike at all, except for the robotically prescient Toward the End of Time, which I very much enjoyed. I intend to read more of him, though not because of this particular book.

Endpoint is divided into four sections: the eponymously titled first section is a longish (pp 3-29) poem focused on various birthdays and other events in the seven years leading up to the author's death. Despite the gravitas of the subject matter, it felt a bit hollow and sterile to me. I did not feel the rich language or craftsmanship (despite the loose blank verse) that marks good poetry.

The second section, "Other Poems", is a collection of poems on random topics. Consider "DOO-WOP":

Does anyone but me ever wonder
where these old doo-wop stars you see
in purple tuxedos with mauve lapels
on public-television marathons
have been between the distant time when they
recorded their hit (usually only one,...

Before ending with "how did they do it, do it still, still doo?" (p36). If that's an attempt at humor, it is just as lost as the location of the doo-wop stars about which Updike wonders. Or consider "COLONOSCOPY":

Talk about intimacy! I'd almost rather not.
The day before...

OK, John, you're right--stop there. Let's move on.

With the title of the third section, "Sonnets", I was expecting more craftsmanship. But these are so-called "American" sonnets: that is to say, their "sonnetness" is blurred. Several examples are similar to the Petrarchan type in that they are comprised of an 8-line octave followed by a 6-line sextet; but they lack any rhyme scheme, utilizing instead a loosely defined blank verse. Others are sonnet-like only in their 14-line form, without an explicit grouping of the subcomponents (either Petrarchan or Shakespearean).

My favorite section was actually the fourth, oddly titled "Light and Personal." The only thing "lighter" about this group is that they employ a more formal structure and rhyme pattern (the "Personal" bar was already set very high with "COLONOSCOPY" in section 2). The best poem in the book, "ELEGY", is in this section:

Atthol, Mass. -- Eastern equine encephalitis killed two emus in town, state health officials said yesterday. --Boston Globe

Let every Easter egg end-product grieve;
If emus die, egrets and eagles too
Can catch an evil equine bug, and leave
Our eager green Earth to the lark and gnu.

Each Eve in Eden finds a friendly snake.
No bird alive outflies the final flu.
Death steals upon the duckling, duck, and drake;
The end of Athol emus tolls for you.

.
"ELEGY" is a better representation of the pathos that Updike was aiming to achieve with the title poem. This poem is "light" only in the sense that a good cabernet is an iron fist in a silken glove: its breezy concision carries with it an air of profundity and sneaky depth, and the sixth line ("No bird alive outflies the final flu") is the best line of the entire book both in terms of the mellifluousness of its language and the insouciant humor applied to such a grave evocation. And the iambic pentameter and phrasing of this line, and the one immediately preceding it ("Each Eve in Eden finds a friendly snake.") is worthy of Shakespeare. I would have liked to have read more of these lines. ( )

It was always hard not to be secretly a little annoyed at the late John Updike for being… well, so good at everything. The famous novels aside, memoir, travel reportage, children's literature, humor, literary criticism and essays on everything from Renaissance painting to Boston Red Sox great Ted Williams poured from his typewriter.

Despite seven previous collections of verse, dating back to 1958, he was perhaps least known for his poetry. "Endpoint and Other Poems" may change that. The slender volume, rushed to publication by Updike's longtime publisher, Knopf, is an accomplished if slightly schizophrenic affair. The title sequence, a series of linked poems written in the months leading up to his January death from cancer, is as measured and poignant as any verse in recent memory.

The language is beautifully cadenced, displaying the same feel for the music of words that made his prose so distinctive and memorable. Death is "a pin-sized prick of light winked out," while the poet's memories "in their jiggled scope collide / to form more sacred windows." The ugliness of aging, of hospitals and CAT scans and bedside visits is transformed by the rhythms of Updike's verse and the keenness of his observations. He made even dying sound stylish.

The other sections of the book include charming but basically slight meditations and sonnets on such mundane subjects as television, plane travel, baseball, and, er, a bathroom act that my father still refers to using a basketball metaphor. These are fun, in limited doses.

On a scale of difficulty, with 1 being your average limerick and 10 being "The Faerie Queen," these poems check in at a friendly 5. Updike's strong suit as a writer was always the precision of his observations; a line describing the tentative light of early spring as "just trying brightness out" or a "fabled velvet death-black sky / salted with stars" sticks bracingly in the mind.

Some minor objections remain. "Endpoint" has a cleaning-out-the-drawer feel to it, with the sublime side by side with the silly. The shorter pieces, as amusing as they are, carry a whiff of the self-satisfied cleverness that detractors of The New Yorker magazine claim is the house style. Traces of Updike's flaws linger underneath the keen intelligence and virtuoso wordplay. He was a bit of a male chauvinist, to be sure, and his basic stance on life and society was fundamentally reactionary. His attitudes were molded by the 1950s - a decade vividly recalled here in light-handed elegies for Frankie Laine and Doris Day. And while his curiosity never abated, an elderly fussiness peeps around the edges of some of the poems.

All that aside, " Endpoint" serves as a worthy if faintly anticlimactic coda to a towering career in American literature. As an epigraph to one of the poems, Updike has taken a line from a letter that his editor William Maxwell wrote to him: "Please go on being yourself." That he did, right up until the end. We readers are the richer for it.

From the CLEVELAND PLAIN DEALER, April 19, 2009 ( )

John Updike is justly remembered as one of the great American novelists. He also published eight volumes of poetry. I picked this up from the library because I have appreciated a couple of his poems I've read (like the one about resurrection). The title of this collection comes from the first section, a poem (or series of poems?) about Updike's last several birthdays and his final illness. There is also a section of 'other poems' that have poems of Updike's remembrances of friends, reflections on old age, arthritis and colonoscopies, stolen paintings, nature, life and pop culture. There is also a section with Updike's sonnets, and 'lighter and personal poems.

I feel sheepish only giving this three stars. Updike is a very good poet and there are some standout poems; however I found the poems less consistent the further I read. Endpoint is great, so are many "other poems." The sonnets weren't earth shattering and the light, personal poems merely clever. If this book is like an LP. The front side is loaded with hits, the b side has character but no singles. ( )

I had to drop everything and read John Updike’s last book. I first saw the dedication – “For Martha, who asked for one more book: here it is, with all my love.” Then it struck me: he really was gone, no more novels or stories, unless some nearly finished manuscript even now wends its way through editors, typesetters, printers, book sellers, eventually to me. One can only hope.

He died this past January. Every year I remembered -- too late – that I wanted to send him a birthday note on March 18th. How much I now regret those lapses.

He wrote the first group of poems each year on his birthday beginning in 2002. Then a few as he went to the hospital for tests, treatments, never losing his sense of keen observation, and that subtle humor I love so much.

Usually, when I review a book of poetry, I include a sample, but not this time. I need to keep these magnificent words, images, and phrases to myself. Believe me, these poems pack emotion in every line. Memories thread their way from one to the other. Quiet references to friends, books, family, and events color the fabric of his last years, months, and days.

Buy this book. Spend an afternoon with Updike at his bedside, near his easy chair. You will be converted to a lover of his talent as the premier wordsmith in 20th century American letters. Marvel at the list of his works – novels, poems, short stories, a play, a memoir, essays – too marvelous to put down at the last page, but each new page one opens a whole new, wonderful world.

A perfect little book! Beautiful in type, in words, in images, and even in its dust jacket with John half-turned back, a leaf-shaded country lane and all the world before him. My highest rating – 10 stars.

--Chiron, 4/3/09 ( )