John Updike Poems

John Updike
John Hoyer Updike (born March 18, 1932 in Shillington, Pennsylvania) is an American writer. Updike's most famous work is his Rabbit series (Rabbit, Run; Rabbit Redux; Rabbit Is Rich; Rabbit At Rest; and Rabbit Remembered). Rabbit is Rich and Rabbit at Rest both won Pulitzer Prizes for Updike. Describing his subject as "the American small town, Protestant middle class," Updike is well known for his careful craftsmanship and prolific writing, having published 22 novels and more than a dozen short story collections as well as poetry, literary criticism and children's books. Hundreds of his stories, reviews, and poems have appeared in The New Yorker since the 1950s. His works often explore sex, faith, and death, and their interrelationships. As a teenager, Updike was encouraged by his mother, who was also a writer, to write while attending Shillington High School. Updike and his mother had psoriasis, a skin disease where red patches grew on the surface of the skin. Exposure to the sun helped reduce the red spots, so his mother and Updike were always sun tanning. Updike grew up in a relatively poor family. But lack of money did not stop Updike from entering Harvard University on a full scholarship. He served as president of the Harvard Lampoon, before graduating summa cum laude (he wrote a thesis on George Herbert) in 1954 with a degree in English. He became a regular contributor to The New Yorker. Updike’s skin made him unwilling to take on jobs where you had to be presentable. This helped encourage him to write, where he could hide his self consciousness in his novels. After Harvard, however he decided to pursue a career in graphic arts. Updike went to The Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Arts, in Oxford. At Oxford, Udpike realized that he had no interest in painting or scuplting.


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Poems

Poems Collection - poems, 2021 edition