`Yesterday's Tomorrows'

Recently I dismissed science fiction as one of the “childish things” I long ago put aside, and that was the truth until I remembered Tom Disch. I read his novel Camp Concentration when it was published in 1968, and later 334 and On Wings of Song, and I’ve since reread them all. This is science fiction for grownups, written in good prose and without the conventional props of the genre. As a sci-fi apostate, Disch in 1998 wrote The Dreams our Stuff is Made Of, which starts like this:

“America is a nation of liars, and for that reason science fiction has a special claim to be our national literature, as the art form best adapted to telling the lies we like to hear and to pretend we believe.”

And later:

“SF is in its nature an ephemeral literature. Most predictions of the future are wide of the mark, and their errors become more glaring as the years progress. No blossoms wither so quickly as yesterday's tomorrows.”

But it’s as a poet that I most enjoy Disch. His poems are funny and elegant, and combine common sense with a sense of wonder – a rare pairing. Eric Ormsby has reviewed Disch’s new book of poems, About the Size of It, in the New York Sun, and termed its author “brilliant and versatile”:

“Mr. Disch is an unusual poet. He is mischievous and elegant in equal measure. His poems can be hilarious yet aren’t really `light verse.’ You have the feeling that the marvelous timing, the clever rhymes, the melodious stanzas, are not produced for mere effect but serve to channel a tremendous exuberance. Mr. Disch clearly has great fun writing poetry and his pleasure is contagious.”

How often, when reading a poem, do you sense the author is having a good time? Here, from Orders of the Retina (1982), is one of my favorite Disch poems, “What to Accept”:

“The fact of mountains. The actuality
Of any stone – by kicking, if necessary.
The need to ignore stupid people,
While retraining one’s natural impulse
To murder them. The change from your dollar,
Be it no more than a penny,
For without a pretense of universal penury
There can be no honor between rich and poor.
Love, unconditionally, or until proven false.
The inevitability of cancer and/or
Heart disease. The dialogue as written,
Once you’ve taken the role. Failure,
Gracefully. Any hospitality
You’re willing to return. The air
Each city offers you to breathe.
The latest hit. Assistance.
All accidents. The end.”

When I praised Disch’s common sense I particularly had in mind his allusion at the start of this poem to Boswell’s anecdote about Johnson:

“After we came out of the church, we stood talking for some time together of Bishop Berkeley's ingenious sophistry to prove the nonexistence of matter, and that every thing in the universe is merely ideal. I observed, that though we are satisfied his doctrine is not true, it is impossible to refute it. I never shall forget the alacrity with which Johnson answered, striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from it -- `I refute it thus.’”

But the entire poem embodies common sense and a plain-dealing stoical acceptance of life on life’s terms. In a word, it’s mature without being fuddy-duddy, in particular the part about dealing with stupid people, which is always so difficult, especially when they’re convinced of their brilliance. Humor is rare in poetry, whether slapstick or rarified wit, and Disch is often very funny. Here, from ABCDEFG HIJKLM NOPQRST UVWXYZ (1981), is “The Art of Dying”:

“Mallarmé drowning
Chatterton coughing up his lungs
Auden frozen in a cottage
Byron expiring at Missolonghi
and Hart Crane visiting Missolonghi and dying there too

“The little boot of Sylvia Plath wedged in its fatal stirrup
Tasso poisoned
Crabbe poisoned
T.S. Eliot raving for months in a Genoa hospital before he died
Pope disappearing like a barge into a twilight of drugs

“The execution of Marianne Moore
Pablo Neruda spattered against the Mississippi
Hofmannsthal's electrocution
The quiet painless death of Robert Lowell
Alvarez bashing his bicycle into an oak

“The Brownings lost at sea
The premature burial of Thomas Gray
The baffling murder of Stephen Vincent Benét
Stevenson dying of dysentery
and Catullus of a broken heart”

The phrase “The execution of Marianne Moore” makes me laugh out loud.

Thanks to Dave Lull for sending me a link to Disch's blog.