Thomas M. Disch 1984
Poetry Book Society
When I read this book, my thoughts will appear in the comment stream below…
A book below that I produced a few weeks ago, and David Mathew asked whether it was inspired by Tom Disch, but then I had not even heard of the Disch book!
The Gestalt Real-Time Reviews of Books 
HERE I AM
COAL MINERS
The poet’s imagination “as it gnaws at the dark walls that surround me”, to be kept from the coal miners he praises, in case it is seen as condescension. A powerful poem, for me, about HAWLING, as I see it.
In this our age now of global warming, and long before the Trumphenomenon, it seems ironic or natural common sense what evil these men — poeticised here by Disch no later than 1984 — voted for in 2016?
DENVER AIRPORT
“If we appear at such moments a nation
Of maniacs locked Into fantasies all”
“Yahoo!”
FORBIDDEN CHILDREN
“…yatteta-yatteta.
Urban violence was escalating, and everyone was simultaneously
Scared, indignant, and unconcerned.”
MANHATTAN NOTES
“everything is over here,
including the oldest friendships.”
PRAYER TO PLEASURE
Eat chicken then keep the bones as a source fot stock. This book’s overall title comes again into play, as pleasure and oblivion are seen to be almost equivalent. Repetitions of oblivion as the vessels that are each ready to hold the next potentially empty-able pleasure?
JUST BEFORE THE COPS ARRIVE
WAKING IN A STRANGE APARTMENT
“Some people
understand the way things work; the rest of us
just float along and trust to luck”
I know that feeling and also waking up where I already am, only to find a disease waking up within me…
RIDDLES
Although I talk of no one and
Of nothing else but me and mine,
I hope you will not understand
Just who I am until the line
Revealing all my taradiddle
As the substance of (two words)
The above is one example of a riddle in a poem entitled RIDDLES with six riddles by Tom Disch.
What are the two words above giving the answer of what this particular riddle is about?
THE WOUNDED BARBARIAN
“, a nonstop
Utrillo painting…”
Europe on the rack amid small talk and postcards.
(No social media).
CONCERTO FOR PIANO AND ORCHESTRA
“Do what you should – and call it what you please.”
Surely a classic poem to end this HERE I AM section of the book. The world’s first gestalt real-time review?
I previously thought mine in 2002 of the Arnold Symphonies (shown here: https://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/my-original-real-time-revie-2002/) was the first!
THERE YOU ARE
ODE ON THE SOURCE OF THE CLITUMNUS
“But wasn’t the world always a mess —“
“Every day the world
Grows poorer as the population
Soars. There doesn’t seem to be much time
Until the likeliest holocaust prevails.”
“We must praise the source of the Clitumnus.
Not that you are beautiful, not at all —“
AN DIE FERNE GELIEBTE
“Oh loveliest of all the lives I’ve led,
Let me be your alien again,…”
Making the poem’s ‘narrator’ into a ruin, raped by the country of Italy itself. Thus, ruining the Temple of Clitumnus of the previous poem? Or leaving it in situ? To make it mine or yours?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_die_ferne_Geliebte
“— not the light, not the air,
Nor yet, ma foi,”
FOUX source in France, fous as fools, or an Alpine town? This is a poem that flows well, sinks into the sump of my mind with ease and pleasure, but its meaning? A stoicism of thrift, and simply being who you are?
FOR A DERELICT
A heart-wrenching poem about being homeless. Even more significant today. Here I am, there you are, where was wee.
YOU CAN OWN THIS PAINTING FOR $75
“His wife became
A lesbian. His salary’s inadequate,”
A remarkable image-variegated, memory-haunted poem of an elephant in the room, a Dumbo in a tutu, possibly — a clown crying.
A BREAD-AND-BUTTER NOTE
“Someone smiles
at someone else.”
This poem has the irony of masks to match a poem of a mask here: https://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/2018/12/22/ice-autumn-glass-mark-fuller-dillon/#comment-14858 coincidentally reviewed ten minutes ago.
“The ageless, golden masks
that ring the table in a wreath of styles”
WHEN YOUR HAND SHAKES, WHEN YOUR EYE’S MEAT
Read this poem aloud and it truly lives. Whatever its meaning, it’s for me today’s perfect poem beyond anything Ginsberg or Ferlinghetti wrote.
WHEN YOUR EYES MEET, WHEN YOUR HAND SHAKES
An incantatory series of rhythmic ‘when’ lines that beg to be read aloud.
“When you happen to meet a friend
And it ends in dinner, when someone says,
‘You’re getting thinner’, and you know
You’re not;”
ODE ON THE DEATH OF PHILIP K. DICK
“They are the honey ravens bring
To feast the poet in the desert of his heart –
Might-have-beens, imaginings, false starts.”
This is a moving, substantial ode owed to PKD.
Enabling his return…
AN ADDRESS TO HIS SOUL
or
DONNE WITHOUT FAITH
As with the promise of the title, a poem that was attuned to my own soul’s battle with doubt and death, it is always a worthy experience to take, over extended time, long slow absorptions of these poems. Here, a shriving as well as a striving. Coupled with pleasure in great poetry, as a bonus, an added bolster.
A VALEDICTORY ODE TO THE CITY OF NEW YORK
“. . . I’m serious this time. The grand
Old lies are foundering.”
A long, ironic, heartfelt renewed unrequitedness of an item of mixed love and less than love to match that just read here with people in Ice & Autumn glass: https://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/2018/12/22/ice-autumn-glass-mark-fuller-dillon/#comment-15477
WHERE WERE WE
.
A CATALOGUE
“how it must feel to be world-famous and then no one at all;”
A touching catalogue of where he walked with his loved one, “everywhere I’ve ever walked with you.”
Cf my parallel poetry review linked above.
ATOCHA CHOO-CHOO
“…in a series
Of muffled collisions”
A journey in words of a Spanish train journey. Slots and U turns, without turntables? And words that sound like the journey itself. Only by reading books that you would not expect to read do you sometimes reach things you would not otherwise reach but you would want to reach if you knew about them!
DELAUNAY’S LA TOUR EIFFEL
For John Berger
“Hup-la! O Paris,”
“Soon, I believe,
We will live all our lives in the air —
Circling the crystal earth”
This poem seems to have a surprisingly synchronous mutual-synergy with — as well as an interesting contrastive complement to — WE’LL NEVER HAVE PARIS that I happen to be concurrently reviewing… https://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/2019/05/22/well-never-have-paris/
TO OUR CHRISTMAS TREE
“Tall as you are,”
The dangerous logistics of being photographed. The comparative sensibilities and sensitivities of such otherwise inanimate plant life and human wedding guests,
TO OUR TURTLE
“Can’t you accept
Your turtleness?”
I can’t change having decided to read this poem today. Once read, it cannot be unread.
YES, LET’S
“let’s let forgetfulness climb the staircase…”
A poem where memory is paradoxically revealed by forgetfulness.
Memories of nuns with wooden pointers, Saturday afternoons, airports, cyclones…
ALCOHOL ISLAND: A CHRONICLE
“Plankton and planets swim and sink
And never feel the need to think.”
The quirks and foibles of foreign holidays? Or the deeper message for our times of Trump and Brexit that this poet pre-deceased but is still thinking about?
Not that Trump ever drinks alcohol.
I intend to read the rest of this poetry book outside the scope of this site’s real-time reviewing, I am looking forward to reading it all.