John Updike's poetry - and my brief conversation with him

I recommend to all the excellent essay from Brad Leithauser in the New Criterion (linked via arts and letters daily) on John Updike's poetry - this essay will, I think, be the forward to a forthcoming Updike Selected Poems - it's probably the best examination of Updike's poetry, and his entire literary career, that I've ever read - truly makes you appreciate JU's greatness and makes you want to go out and read more - esp the poetry, that many readers have neglected. I may have posted on this before but I have a snippet to add to the discussion of Updike's poetry: When was the books editor at the Providence Journal, from about 1985-1990, JU gave a reading at the Rhode Island School of Design, which I covered. In fact, RISD invited me to attend and to join for a dinner afterwards. I was honored to sit at the table with - next to, in fact, if I remember correctly - JU. The dinner conversation was polite and a little formal; one of his daughters (a RISD grad, I think), with grandchildren, was at another table. At one point the then-RISD prez tapped his glass and thanked Updike and asked a few inane questions: Do you write on a computer, e.g. After dinner I asked JU if I could interview him briefly for my story, and he agreed. (I taped it, and to my regret I can't find the cassette.) One thing I asked him is why he chose to read from his poetry rather than from a recent piece of fiction. (His entire reading was selections from his poetry collection Midpoint.) He indicated that when he's reading to promote a book (i.e., when the publisher is footing the bill) he reads from that book, but he much prefers to read from his poetry. "I'm not sure why," he said. I was pretty sure he knew why, and summoned the nerve to say: "Maybe it's because when you write fiction you have a set of ideas or thoughts or memories that you have to get out of you and once you write it, you feel that it's gone. When you write poetry, you're trying to capture a moment or thought or image that's passing by you, and once you write the poem, you've caught it." He smiled and looked at me, a little surprised, and said: "Exactly!" As noted, I think he knew that all along and I was certainly not providing him with any new insight into his work, but he didn't want to say all that to me and sound pretentious in print. Not sure if I wrote that in the story - I doubt it - but there you have it. If any readers of this post can get this anecdote to Leithauser I'd appreciate that.