I’m pleased to learn the poet and fiction writer Tom Disch – identified as “T.M. Disch” – is cited twelve times in the Oxford English Dictionary. I’m not surprised. Disch had a hedonist’s love of language coupled with a barbed sense of wit. He lived by the observation he made in The Castle of Indolence: On Poetry, Poets, and Poetasters (1995): “Nothing can excuse dullness, except a critic intent on originality.”
The entry
for ospimath includes a citation from
Disch’s 1968 novel Camp Concentration:
“‘Opsi?’ I asked Mordecai. ‘Short for opsimath—one who begins to learn late in
life. We’re all opsimaths here.’” Not surpisingly, also cited is William F.
Buckley (dead, like Disch, in 2008). The OED’s definition: “A person who begins to learn or study late in
life.”
Found in the
same novel is another exotic word, nystagmic:
“I don’t care to look behind it at the nystagmic flicker of image that the
nethermind is broadcasting to the faulty receptor of the overmind.” It’s
medical in origin, the adjective form of the noun meaning “involuntary, rapid,
oscillating movement of the eyeballs (most commonly from side to side).”
From another
Disch novel, Echo Round Bones (1967),
comes this: “A minacious cold seemed to settle over him, followed by a feeling
of hollowness, that spread slowly to all his limbs.” As a critic and sometimes
as a poet, Disch could be minacious, which means “menacing, threatening; of a
threatening character; full of threats or menaces.”
Here, from Orders of the Retina (1982), is a favorite
Disch poem, “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.”
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 difficult,
especially when they’re convinced of their brilliance. Humor is rare in poetry,
whether slapstick or rarified wit, and Disch is among the funniest of recent poets,
along with Turner Cassity, A.M. Juster and X.J. Kennedy.
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