John Updikes first collection of verse since Midpoint takes its title from a poem about insomnia Throughout this is poetry with its eyes wide open restlessly alert for the oddities of reality and the double entendres of imagination Fanciers of light verse will find a middle section of delicate fossil prints left by this vanished form readers of Mr Updikes fiction will recognize some of the landscapes and preoccupations In three long poems he in turn remembers a boyhood Sunday in Pennsylvania addresses aspects of a Harvard education and contemplates with a Dionysian verve the aesthetic challenge posed by the new sexual candor We must assimilate cunts to our creed of beauty Shorter poems treat of spring and flying of gold and the Caribbean of sand dollars and bicycle chains of the shades of bliss and variety of phenomena accessible to a man past the midpoint of his life trying to pace himself as he heads toward Nandi