Endpoint is a fitting conclusion to the poetry collections John Updike published over the course of this prolific writer's life. And it's all the more poignant because the author was assembling this collection in the weeks preceding his death from lung cancer in January 2009. Updike knew he was dying, yet, as the end approached, devoted himself to one final task.
Endpoint is not uniquely elegiac, though; far from it. Updike's verse had taken that wistful turn as far back as Americana, which had been published way back in 2001. But that volume read more along the lines of something penned by a professor emeritus, while this one deals quite specifically in some poems with the author's fast-approaching mortality.
For those who discover and appreciate this volume and want more, I must regretfully inform that almost all of Updike's previous poetry collections are long out of print. His Collected Poems is still available, though, and contains nearly all the poems he published up until 1993. Also noteworthy: Americana, the only volume of his verse published after 1993 and thus not represented in Collected Poems. Both Americana and Collected Poems, along with Endpoint, are available from Johnson County Library.
John Updike was many things to many readers—great novelist, outstanding short-story writer, prolific essayist and critic, and a very good poet whose work in the latter category ranged from light verse to free verse to the sonnet. He will be missed, and remembered.
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