Many of you have probably heard the news: John Updike died yesterday.
It seems only fitting that I attempt to at least honor him in some small way, though his influence on my love of both the contemporary novel and contemporary poetry have been anything but small. One thing I can say with certainty about John Updike is that I have always felt a sense of closeness to him through his work that I have rarely felt with the works of other writers. Of course Updike purposed this through his writing, but he did it in such a way that it never seemed contrived.
My favorite Updike novel is, Rabbit, Run. Rabbit at Rest comes in at a close second. I also hold fondly in the library of my mind, a seemingly less commonly read Updike, Three Great Secret Things.
Since I can't logically reproduce any of those here, I offer "Burning Trash." I feel that this, perhaps more than Updike's other poems, characterizes the commonness that makes his characters so great. Please read this short poem. I hope you will be glad that you did.
"Burning Trash"
--John Updike
At night—the light turned off, the filament
Unburdened of its atom-eating charge,
His wife asleep, her breathing dipping low
To touch a swampy source—he thought of death.
Her father's hilltop home allowed him time
To sense the nothing standing like a sheet
Of speckless glass behind his human future.
He had two comforts he could see, just two.
One was the cheerful fullness of most things:
Plump stones and clouds, expectant pods, the soil
Offering up pressure to his knees and hands.
The other was burning the trash each day.
He liked the heat, the imitation danger,
And the way, as he tossed in used-up news, S
tring, napkins, envelopes, and paper cups,
Hypnotic tongues of order intervened.
John Updike, “Burning Trash” from Collected Poems 1953-1993
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Final Post for the Semester
If you have blogged at least 12 times, you may post your concluding remarks here.
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