contemporary poetry

"We're all performing our bruises"

It’s eighty-two degrees and I sit on sun drenched concrete, hot pink book in hand, pebble- small crimson strawberries staining my left hand and right knee. Suddenly, a fluttery brown butterfly wiggles between my thigh and the ground, crouching against my skin. I shriek- being the put together young woman i am- and then quiet, carefully shifting to stare at this beautiful thing that has chosen me to rest against. It flutters upwards too quickly, shooting straight into my neck where its wings rustle kisses much too softly against the most intimate sections of

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