It's not my intention to see this blog go into the toilet, but I couldn't let John Updike's passing go without calling attention to my favorite poem by the late great man of American letters. (Whose obuituary by the Inquirer's Carlin Romano is here.)
Romano writes that Updike's "prolific creativity across almost every genre known to literature," and in her appreciation in the New York Times, Michiko Kakutani wrote that Updike, who died on Tuesday at age 76, was "Victorian in his industriousness and almost blogger-like in his determination to turn every scrap of knowledge and experience into words."
Surely there's no better example of Updike's ability to view anything and everything as grist for the artistic mill than his gazing upon the detritus of the day and preserving it for posterity in this bit of verse, first published in the Oxford American in 1989.
"The Beautiful Bowel Movement"
mere squibs and nubs, like half-smoked pale cigars,
the tint and stink recalling Tuesday's meal,
the texture loose and soon dissolved—this one,
struck off in solitude one afternoon
(that prairie stretch before the late light fails)
with no distinct sensation, sweet or pained,
of special inspiration or release,
unbroken, in the bowl, as if a potter
who worked in this most frail, least grateful clay
had set himself to shape a topaz vase.
O spiral perfection, not seashell nor
stardust, how can I keep you? With this poem.