March 31, 2009 was the publication date for Endpoint, Updike’s final collection of poems. These are the reviews of which we’re aware.
“Endpoint and Other Poems.” Publishers Weekly. March 30, 2009. “Many delights but few real surprises await Updike’s admirers in this last book of poems from the prolific essayist and novelist, completed only weeks before his death.”
“The New Yorker: ‘Endpoint’—Poems by John Updike.” Cliff Garstang. Perpetual Folly. March 18, 2009. “The speed with which this book is being produced no doubt makes good business sense, but seems grisly to me, particularly if the excerpt in TNY is an indication of the overall subject matter.”
“‘Endpoint and Other Poems’ by John Updike.” Carmela Ciuraru. March 31, 2009. “These last poems are tender, nostalgic but never sentimental.”
“Endpoint and Other Poems.” Ray Olson. Booklist Online. April 1, 2009. Olson writes that “these are personal but not egotistic poems. It seems as though Updike were aiming to record the end of the life of a successful enough American middle-class male, and in his novelist’s voice.”
“Updike’s ENDPOINT: Light at Sunset.” W. Scott Smoot. The Word Sanctuary. April 11, 2009. “In his writing, Updike never shied from the darkest and foulest parts (however often I wished he had), but he always highlighted ‘whatever is good, whatever is true, whatever is just’ in the subject at hand,” Smoot writes. “Nine years after AMERICANA, he turns that same light on his own aging and death in ENDPOINT AND OTHER POEMS.”
“’Endpoint: And Other Poems,’ by John Updike.” Nicholas Delbanco. San Francisco Chronicle. April 12, 2009. “. . . it’s doubly a shock and revelation when the palate darkens and the poetry goes deep. The titular series, ‘Endpoint,’ seems to this reader an act of sustained self-examination, and very brave.”
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