Cheever and Updike
I'm Updike. I found my fluency young. I could out-b.s. all my profs at Yale, He outwrote his peers, his painting was dung, As were my stories. We soared past a fail. I reread "California" recently, It's not too bad, but it's too schematic, It upscales the magi's gift decently, It's too New Yorker deadpan dramatic. I'm Cheever. Swimming in a marsh at night, That once was mine but is not anymore, To a decrepit dock with a dead light. The site of a Wapshot-like family war. I'm Portnoy. I think I could have waxed Roth. Been a Waspy master of seacoast froth.