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.”

“Updike redux; These final poems mark last birthdays, bouts with cancer, and the incredible lightness of being.” Peter Campion. Boston Globe. April 12, 2009. “The poems, often written in a jauntily varied iambic pentameter, read like lineated journal entries, but a feeling of necessity runs beneath each of them.”

“Gerald Dawe reviews Endpoint and Other Poems by John Updike.” Gerald Dawe. Irish Times. April 18, 2009. “Updike seems like an underlying presence; a force of human nature that produced, (almost in keeping with the industrial tradition out of which he and his characters emerged) over 60 books. Endpoint is up there with the best of them.” ENDPOINT Irish Times 4_18_2009

“Classic review: Poetry collections to cherish; Short reviews of three delightful poetry collections.” Elizabeth Lund. Christian Science Monitor. April 19, 2009. “As ‘Endpoint’ progresses, the writing becomes even stronger, as if Updike had warmed up his pitching arm.”

“Final volume: A poet to the end; John Updike’s ‘Endpoint’ is at once an elegy and a resurrection.” James D. Watts, Jr. Tulsa World. April 19, 2009. “. . . even in the lightest of Updike’s poetry is a strain of seriousness, just as he manages to inject moments of sly humor into the profoundly sad poems that make up the opening section of this book.” ENDPOINT Tulsa World 4_19_2009

“John Updike is a keen observer in his final book of poems.” Karen R. Long. The [Cleveland] Plain Dealer. April 20, 2009. “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.”

“Book Review: Michael Dirda on ‘Endpoint and Other Poems’ by John Updike.” Michael Dirda. The Washington Post. April 23, 2009. “The more clever, the more acrobatic, the more astonishing, the better. What may surprise, though, is that Updike’s many serious poems are so frankly personal, full of wistfulness and wonder, and unafraid of being sentimental.”

“’Endpoint’ marks the last of John Updike’s poetry.” Carmela Ciuraru. San Jose Mercury News. May 3, 2009. “Updike’s poetry is often dismissed as ‘light verse.’ Yet, with ‘Endpoint,’ he proves capable of ruminative melancholy as well.”

“John Updike’s last poems.” Clive James. New York Times Book Review. May 3, 2009. “Updike could have reported the nation like this all his life, but he chose another method. Let there be no doubt, though, about the high quality of what he might have done. In a single poem, he did enough of it to prove that he not only had the whole tradition of English-speaking poetry in his head, he had the means to add to it.”

“Updike’s Farewell:  Endpoint.” David Michael. Wunderkammer Magazine. May 7, 2009. “It is easy to lapse into errant judgment that he is not a serious poet but a peddler in light or comic verse. This is, after all, the man who once wrote a poem praising a particularly satisfying shit he took (‘The Beautiful Bowel Movement’),” Michael writes. “Unlike ‘Midpoint,’ in which Updike considers ‘foretastes of death’ a comfort of adulthood, ‘Endpoint,’ the lengthy title poem of the volume, reveals an aging Updike trying to delay the inevitable death, the approach of which he is all too aware.”

“’Endpoint’ by John Updike; Reflections on mortality, in verse.” Bob Hoover. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. May 10, 2009. “Few writers in recent memory have written so clinically and accepting of their closeness to death, yet there is a quiet undertone of poignancy to Updike’s resignation,” Hoover writes.

“Intimations of mortality.” Carmine Starnino. The [Toronto] Globe and Mail. May 15, 2009. “But Endpoint also reminds us of what Updike could achieve when his versifying was animated by more than hobbyist. And what animated him this (final) time was extinction.”

“The upbeat poet.” Craig Brown. Mail on Sunday (UK). May 24, 2009. “Now that this last stage has been and gone, the poems he has left behind are a testimony to his determination to make the best of it.” ENDPOINT Mail on Sunday 5_24_2009

“‘My Father’s Tears’ and ‘Endpoint’ by John Updike.” John Freeman. Los Angeles Times. June 7, 2009. “It’s an extraordinary send-off. But there is more to the book, and it has the feel of so much of Updike’s verse: It exists because it can.”

“Occasional Poetry and John Updike’s Endpoint.” Micah Mattix. First Things. February 2, 2010. Mattix evaluates the collection in the context of what other reviewers have had to say, and concludes that “while light verse and occasional poems can be just that—light and occasional—in the work of most poets, in the hands of the best poets—and Updike is perhaps one of them—they become the tools of serious philosophical, ethical, and even theological work.”

“Endpoint and Other Poems, by John Updike.” “Barry.” Blogging for a Good Book (Williamsburg Regional Library). April 22, 2011. “Poetry allows the reader to examine familiar things in extraordinary ways as well as to experience completely new things. John Updike’s Endpoint allows us both opportunities.”

More links will be added as they come to our attention.