Like many of you, I've taught John Updike's "A & P," that little fiction masterpiece of Americana, in Introduction to Literature courses. Students seem to like it -- Sammy, the protagonist, is about their age, and the story is deeply textured by the detritus of the everyday; also, students are relieved to read something light on symbolism and heavy on teenage girls in bathing suits, particularly if they've just read something like, say, "A Rose for Emily," that taxes both their analytical skills and their video-game-trained patience.
Updike's poetry is often seen as secondary to his fiction, and I'm not going to mount an extensive discussion of its relative worth to the Rabbit novels. But this often-anthologized poem is a wonderful thing as Updike weaves a tapestry of meaning out of juxtaposing the quotidian and poetic, reality and dreams. It can hold its own with any of Updike's prose. It's a damn fine poem.