"Collected Poems: 1953--1993" by John Updike (1993)

One writes a story to share a thought. One writes a novel to escape by getting lost in one's own plot. One writes a poem to relive an emotion, in slow motion, and, in a single incision with the precision of the correct word, to relieve oneself of that emotion and to pin it onto the world. Updike's service is not in the depth of individual verses, but in the fellowship of a life distributed "as is."