John Updike

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John Updike

John Updike’s poems are written in a very peculiar style. Unlike most poets, Updike’s poems seem to tell a story, rather than depict a singular emotion. This is due to the fact that many of Updike’s poems deal with simple, yet focused topics. Updike masters the use of vivid language to produce powerful images in the minds of his readers. The use of such strong language in his poems allow his readers to see and experience the messages which he is portraying. Although the topics of Updike’s poems vary immensely, the same detailed conceptions are evoked from every poem.

One poem that stands out, among his sexual pieces, is Fellatio. Unlike intercourse, fellatio has been depicted throughout history as an unclean and unacceptable practice. In Updike’s poem, Fellatio, he initially gives this sexual act a completely different characterization. Updike writes, “How beautiful to think / that each of these clean secretaries / at night, to please her lover, takes / a fountain into her mouth...” (p. 49). Although the act of oral sex is widely practiced today, I have never heard it depicted as a beautiful act. The sense of beauty comes from the idea that the woman and her lover share a bond so deep that she is willing to do anything to please him. Updike later portrays this act as very natural, because he goes on to compare the culmination of oral sex to nature in the end of this poem. The act is compared to the planting of flowers in a field, or the beautiful, clean, innocent clouds in the sky. This poem was very shocking to me, because it gave this act such innocent, natural connotations, when you first read it. Updike, however, has added a subtle element of humor to this poem. This element of humor dep...

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...r’s mind and body. We can all, when reading this poem, not only hear the sound that the plane makes when it passes overhead, but we can actually feel it reverberating through our bodies.

John Updike uses many different techniques in his poems to convey the messages of his poems. Updike uses contradictory descriptions and images to amplify his meaning in some of his poems. These poems tend to create two very different images within the reader’s mind, but he also has another affective means of making the reader understand the meaning of his poems. John Updike is a master of manipulating the sound of words. This allows his readers to actually feel the meanings of his poems, without having to explore his intentions when writing the poems.

Bibliography:

Works Cited:

Updike, John Collected Poems 1953-1993. New York: Random House, Inc. 1993.

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