What literary terms are used in the poem "Perfection Wasted" by John Updike?"Perfection Wasted" by John Updike And another regrettable thing...

The entire poem is built around an extended metaphor that
compares life to some form of comedy act on a stage. Updike begins his poem by lamenting
the fact that death marks the end of "your own brand of magic," that is your own
personal brand of humour and jokes. Life, in this poem, is compared to a stage
performance that you put on for "those loved ones nearest / the lip of the stage." The
audience, made up of your nearest and dearest are imagined responding to your
show:

...their
soft faces blanched

in the footlight glow, their laughter
close to tears...

This
"performance" of humans is "twinned" by their "response," which shows that the
"audience" is appreciative and finds the act funny. All of these personal, family
in-jokes are described as "The whole act." As the poem ends, Updike ends with the rather
sad and depressing thought that the "act" of each of us is incredibly original and can
never be repeated once we are gone:

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Who will do it again? That's it: no
one;

Imitators and descendants aren't the
same.

The death of each
person represents a tremendous loss, the poem says, not least in terms of our personal
sense of humour that is so unique to us and can never be repeated or imitated. Thus the
central example of figurative language is how life is compared to a stand up comedy show
through an extended metaphor.