#five poems

[uwmspeccoll]

Milestone Monday

March 18th is the birthday of acclaimed American novelist, poet, and short-story writer John Updike (1932-2009). Updike was inspired to become a writer by his mother’s attempts to get published during his childhood and recalled fondly the memory of her writing desk with all its admirable equipment. By his early twenties, Updike had published a poem in the New Yorker as well as a collection of poetry with Harper & Brothers. His early successes went on to spur a prolific and varied career that included being one of only four writers to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction more than once in 1982 and 1991. 

To mark what would have been Updike’s 92nd birthday, we’re sharing his signed limited-edition chapbook Five Poems. Published in 1980 by Bits Press out of Cleveland, Ohio, Five Poems is letterpress printed in an edition of 185 copies with a hand-sewn binding and a clever rebus cover drawn by Updike.  

Read other Milestone Monday posts here! 

See other rebus examples within our collection here! 

– Jenna, Special Collections Graduate Intern 

[kafk-a]

[reasonsforhope]

You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting - over and over announcing your place in the family of things.

—Mary Oliver, "Wild Geese"

[padawansuggest]

Mace: *dragging Kenobi and Vos out of the slam poetry night by their tunic collars and stops Tholme and Jinn from leaving them behind* No, you heard our rules after last week’s incident, they’ve been banned!

Qui-Gon: *ready to argue* What in the galaxy could my sweet baby padawan have done to get kicked out?

Tholme: I must admit, despite Jinn’s willful ignorance, I understand that mine could get banned, but he never mentioned it so I would like to know what he did.

Mace: Obi-Wan wrote a poem about a galaxy wide war that gave seventeen people True Visions and I had a shatterpoint migraine till last night. So for him it’s either me or him in that room and I’m the host so it’s me.

Qui-Gon: *taking a sheepish Obi-Wan into his arms for a pity cuddle cause that poem had led to like four straight days of council sessions and an enslaved Dathomiri child being found in a senator’s house on Naboo* To be fair. Obi-Wan had some good points.

Tholme: I’m scared to ask. What did mine do?

Mace: He didn’t write a poem so he went up to the mic and started licking it. It was the most disgusting noise I ever heard. If he gets near a mic I might have to drop kick him. Safer for him out here.

Tholme: *deep sigh of sadness* Yeah that sounds like something he’d do.

[theoptia]

Henri Michaux, from Five Poems by Henri Michaux; "Repose In Unhappiness"

Text ID: I am the ruin you made.

[asoftepiloguemylove]

William Shakespeare // pinterest // Feel Good (2020-2021) cr. Joe Hampson & Mae Martin // Natalie Diaz These Hands, If Not Gods // Sandra Cisneros Woman at Hollering Creek: Stories; "Never Marry a Mexican" // Holland NUMBER BOY // Richard Siken Crush // 스물다섯 스물하나 Twenty-Five Twenty-One (2022) dir. Jung Ji-hyun // Sappho // Dodie She // Maureen Seaton Furious Cooking; "Swan Lake" // unknown // Frank Ocean Forrest Gump // แปลรักฉันด้วยใจเธอ I Told Sunset About You / I Promised You the Moon (2020-2022) dir. Naruebet Kuno & Tossaphon Riantong // Danez Smith Recklessly (via @tendermimi)

[icaruspendragon]

enjoy a first draft

[shrimpricebowl]

brrrrboard

[luthienne]

George Seferis, from Collected Poems (tr. Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard)

[Text ID: Now I long for a little quiet all I want is a hut on a hill or near a sea-shore all I want in front of my window is a sheet immersed in bluing spread there like the sea]

[cannibalismyuri]

inspired by this

[officesuppliez]

Poem by M. A. Thompson - I Won’t Write My Poem ‘Till I’m In My Right Mind

click images for better quality!

I'm so proud of this. my favorite frame to make was the fredbear one. that lighting is so fun to do :] the fnaf 6 michael one is a close 2nd!

[theoptia]

Henri Michaux, from Five Poems by Henri Michaux; "Repose In Unhappiness"

Text ID: Into your light, [...] I abandon myself.

[thatsbelievable]

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