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photo by john updike

John Updike has been a friend of mine since the late 1990s when we co-judged the National Poetry Book Award together (Denise Duhamel won that year). In late August of 2008, I traveled to Beverly, Massachusetts to visit him and to talk about our poetry book manuscripts-in-progress. His was to be called Endpoint, named similar to some of his earlier volumes; mine was later to be called The Binghamton Poems. After our three-hour meeting at a little restaurant on the bay near his home, we went our separate ways with the promise of editing each other’s work during the fall and early winter. Both are due out in mid 2009.