Art and Politics / Politics and Art

John Updike and My Mother

10 John Updike and My Mother I think you wrote those closing sonnets for us, not for the page that held your rising wreckage inches above the flood, before mere words would claim you whole. You spent those few red leaves of energy like autumn glimpsing winter in a whirling gust, telling us how it is, that we are not alone nor will we be despite the final solitude, that one can make the last throw on a potter’s wheel a formal taking leave, its strict release gracing the turn that wrenches free of time. This is the way I saw and see my mother, who forty years ago slid past my clutching, my fierce yearning poised to follow her. But she had left her spirit-breath, her loving bones for me to introject the strength and beauty shed to shape my legacy. Love comes from life and from the quiet page. A cradle and a platform where we launch our spirits, power we share, deepening life, regenerating it. ...