Published in 1969, John Updike’s

consists of the title poem, a lengthy collage that occupies nearly half the volume, and numerous shorter lyrics and witty verse. While numerous pieces are reprinted from various magazines,

appears for the first time and is clearly the most important poem in the collection. It is Updike’s longest and most ambitious poem. Updike’s biographer Adam Begley describes it as a “searching look back over [Updike’s] thirty-six years, a summing-up after a prolific decade as a professional author and an excavation of his identity as a son, a lover, a husband, a father” (295). The poem is highly autobiographical. In it Updike assesses his own life as he has grown from a small boy in a suburb of a Pennsylvania manufacturing…

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Citation: Mazzeno, Laurence. "Midpoint". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 29 April 2024 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=3589, accessed 23 November 2024.]

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