Telephone Poles and Other Poems

Nonfiction, Entertainment, Drama, Anthologies, Fiction & Literature, Poetry, American
Cover of the book Telephone Poles and Other Poems by John Updike, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
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Author: John Updike ISBN: 9780307961969
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group Publication: April 25, 2012
Imprint: Knopf Language: English
Author: John Updike
ISBN: 9780307961969
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication: April 25, 2012
Imprint: Knopf
Language: English

WHEN, five years and five books of fiction ago, THE CARPENTERED HEN, John Updike’s first collection of verse, was published, Phyllis McGinley wrote: “I have been happily reading Mr. Updike in The New Yorker for some time and am happy, now, to own him collected.  When he first appeared in that magazine, I was so elated to see a new name in light verse that I felt like crying with the Ancient Mariner ‘A Sail, A Sail!’  His is what poetry of this sort exactly out to be—playful but elegant, sharp-eyed, witty.”  In the Saturday Review, David McCord wrote: “Furthermore, he is a graceful border-crosser (light verse to poem) as Auden has been; as Betjeman and McGinley frequently are.”
                This second collection is equally divided between poems that, in their verbal jugglery and humorous bias, seem to qualify as “light” and poems that, one way or other, cross the problematic border into the general realm of poetry.  The distinction cannot be clear-cut.  The poet is consistently concerned with Man’s cosmic embarrassment, and the same vision illuminates the creatures of “The High Hearts” and “Seagulls.”  Science and religion, so frequently and variously invoked, frame a single paradox, the paradox of the mundane; and each poem, whether inspired by an antic headline or a suburban landscape, rejoices in the elusive surface of created things.

View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart

WHEN, five years and five books of fiction ago, THE CARPENTERED HEN, John Updike’s first collection of verse, was published, Phyllis McGinley wrote: “I have been happily reading Mr. Updike in The New Yorker for some time and am happy, now, to own him collected.  When he first appeared in that magazine, I was so elated to see a new name in light verse that I felt like crying with the Ancient Mariner ‘A Sail, A Sail!’  His is what poetry of this sort exactly out to be—playful but elegant, sharp-eyed, witty.”  In the Saturday Review, David McCord wrote: “Furthermore, he is a graceful border-crosser (light verse to poem) as Auden has been; as Betjeman and McGinley frequently are.”
                This second collection is equally divided between poems that, in their verbal jugglery and humorous bias, seem to qualify as “light” and poems that, one way or other, cross the problematic border into the general realm of poetry.  The distinction cannot be clear-cut.  The poet is consistently concerned with Man’s cosmic embarrassment, and the same vision illuminates the creatures of “The High Hearts” and “Seagulls.”  Science and religion, so frequently and variously invoked, frame a single paradox, the paradox of the mundane; and each poem, whether inspired by an antic headline or a suburban landscape, rejoices in the elusive surface of created things.

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