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ericcoliu

Mourning John Updike: One Last Breath

John Updike (March 18, 1932 – January 27, 2009), considered one of the most prominent contemporary American writers and known for his Rabbit series, died of lung cancer on Tuesday in Danvers, Mass., at age of 76.

The following is his poem, entitled "Requiem," which is taken from his forthcoming collection, Endpoint and Other Poems:

Requiem by John Updike (Via NYT)

It came to me the other day:
Were I to die, no one would say,
“Oh, what a shame! So young, so full
Of promise — depths unplumbable!”
Instead, a shrug and tearless eyes
Will greet my overdue demise;
The wide response will be, I know,
“I thought he died a while ago.”
For life’s a shabby subterfuge,
And death is real, and dark, and huge.
The shock of it will register
Nowhere but where it will occur.

Below is my response to his concluding lines “For life’s a shabby subterfuge, / And death is real, and dark, and huge. / The shock of it will register / Nowhere but where it will occur:”

Breath by ericcoliu

I

Live with the living,
die with the dead;
but for him -- limbo.

II

We all, even Jesus,
go six feet under.
Why do you struggle?

III

Living or dying,
I strive for those,
the spaces in between.
_________________
Time is nothing but a disquiet of the soul

ericcoliu · 发表于: 星期四一月 29, 2009 10:00 am 发表主题:

Beckett's Response to the Concluding Lines of Updike’s Requiem

The Shortest Stage Play, Breath by ericcoliu

Over the past two weeks, I have concentrated on viewing the filmed versions of Samuel Beckett’s plays, and impressed by the most compressed of Beckett’s dramatic works entitled Breath. The play has no actors, just a stage full of rubbish. It begins with a brief, faint cry, then the amplified sound of a human breath accompanied by an increase and decrease in the intensity of the light, followed by another faint cry as the lights fade and the curtain falls. Based on Beckett's detailed instructions in his script, the play is estimated about 25 seconds long. The filmed version I watched is about 35 seconds.

Life portrayed in Breath is reduced to a brief interlude of dim light between two cries and two darknesses, symbolizing birth and death. It subtly touches on a more typical Beckett subject: the brevity and futility of life itself. It reminds me of Pozzo's words in Waiting for Godot:

"They give birth astride a grave, the light gleams an instant and then it is night once more."
_________________
Time is nothing but a disquiet of the soul

agincourt

ericcoliu · 发表于: 星期四一月 29, 2009 11:32 pm 发表主题:

Thanks for your reading and comments.

Below is another poem by Updike on death:
(Via Guardian)

Perfection wasted by John Updike

And another regrettable thing about death
is the ceasing of your own brand of magic,
which took a whole life to develop and market -
the quips, the witticisms, the slant
adjusted to a few, those loved ones nearest
the lip of the stage, their soft faces blanched
in the footlight glow, their laughter close to tears,
their warm pooled breath in and out with your heartbeat,
their response and your performance twinned.
The jokes over the phone. The memories packed
in the rapid-access file. The whole act.
Who will do it again? That's it; no one;
imitators and descendants aren't the same.

“Perfection Wasted” is taken from John Updike's Collected Poems 1953-1993, published by Penguin.
_________________
Time is nothing but a disquiet of the soul

ericcoliu