From Publisher's Weekly comes the word that Alfred Knopf, John Updike's long-time publisher, will have the late author's final volume of poetry, Endpoint, on the shelves by April, in time for National Poetry Month.
A new short story collection, titled "My Father's Tears," was turned in to Knopf a few weeks before Updike's death Jan. 27, and will come out in June.
And Knopf's imprint Everyman's Library will come out with "The Maples Stories," a collection of 17 stories that served as the basis of the 1979 TV mini-series "Too Far to Go."
Knopf's email announcement about the new publication date of "Endpoint" included this short Updike poem:
“Requiem”
by John Updike
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.
